(B)(N) The Google Dividend

$2 you say? Thanks.

Drama. Companies don’t have to pay dividends any more than governments “have to” pay interest on their debt or even pay back the debt of which we’re minded of the “Greybacks” of the Confederacy and even more recently of the policies of “Quantitative Easing” and the Euro (The Guardian, January 27, 2015, Davos is starting to get it – inequality is the root cause of stagnation and Reuters, January 26, 2015, How Draghi got divided ECB to say ‘yes’ to money-printing).

Investors who are looking for “shareholder value” tend to take a myopic view of the situation but those who are excessively keen on it might ask themselves why they would give, on balance, 40% of their income after tax to their neighbors who had nothing to do with it (TheStreet, February 5, 2015, Google Has $10 Billion in ‘Hidden Assets’ — Time to Start Paying a Dividend?).

Do Dividends Really Matter? No.

Moreover, the capital markets are obsessed with dividend yield affected by earnings and there are vast industries that cater to that obsession including the news media and I/B/E/S even though they have been told by the best authorities that “Do Dividends Really Matter? – Merton Miller“. No.

It’s also a fact that “earnings don’t matter” because in a world of no dividends and zero or negative earnings, some new firms will emerge and the market will again look like the one that we’re familiar with.

Ecclesiastes (1:9)

And that’s not a matter of conjecture but of proof “(P&I) The Process – The 1st Real Dollar“.

Nor should we be surprised – “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

For more information on real “risk management” in modern times and additional references to the theory and how to read the charts and tables, please see our Post, The RiskWerk Company Glossary and “(P&I) Dividend Risk and Dividend Yield“, and our recent Posts “(P&I) The Profit Box” and “(P&I) The Process – In The Beginning“; and we’ve also profiled hundreds of companies in these Posts and the Search Box (upper right) might help you to find what you’re looking for, such as “(B)(N) TLM Talisman Energy Incorporated” or “(B)(N) ATHN AthenaHealth Incorporated” or “(B)(N) PETM PetSmart Incorporated“, to name just a few.

And for more applications of these concepts please see our Posts which rely on the Theory of the Firm developed by the author (Goetze 2006) which calibrates The Process to the units of the balance sheet and demonstrates the price of risk as the solution to a Nash Equilibrium between “risk-seeking” and “risk-averse” investors within the demonstrated societal norms of risk aversion and bargaining practice. And for more on The Process, please see our Posts The Food Chain and The Process End-Of-Process.

And for more on what risk averse investing has done for us this year, please see our recent Posts on “(P&I) The Easy (EC) Theory of the Capital Markets” or “(B)(N) The Easy (EC) Theory of the S&P 500“, and the past, The S&P TSX “Hangdog” Market or The Wall Street Put or specialty markets such as The Dow Transports & Utilities or (B)(N) The Woods Are Burning, or for the real class action, La Dolce Vita – Let’s Do Prada! and It’s For You, Dear on the smartphone business.

And for more stocks at high prices, The World’s Most Talked About Stocks or Earnings Don’t Matter – NASDAQ 100. And for more on what’s Working in America, Big Oil, Shopping in America or Banking in America, to name just a few.

Postscript

We are The RiskWerk Company and care not a jot for mutual funds, hedge funds, “alternative investments”, the “risk/reward equation” and every other unprovable artifact of investment lore. We have just one product

The Perpetual Bond™
Alpha-smart with 100% Capital Safety and 100% Liquidity
Guaranteed
With No Fees and No Loads on Capital

For more information on RiskWerk, please follow the Tags or Categories attached to this Letter or simply enter Search for additional references to any term that we have used. Related data may be obtained from us for free in a machine readable format by request to RiskWerk@gmail.com.

Disclaimer

Investing in the bond and stock markets has become a highly regulated and litigious industry but despite that, there remains only one effective rule and that is caveat emptor or “buyer beware”. Nothing that we say should be construed by any person as advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, hold or avoid the common stock or bonds of any public company at any time for any purpose. That is the law and we fully support and respect that law and regulation in every jurisdiction without exception and without qualification to the best of our knowledge and ability. We can only tell you what we do and why we do it or have done it and we know nothing at all about the future or the future of stock prices of any company nor why they are what they are, now. The author retains all copyrights to his works in this blog and on this website. The Perpetual Bond®™ is a registered trademark and patented technology of The RiskWerk Company and RiskWerk Limited (“Company”) . The Canada Pension Bond®™ and The Medina Bond®™ are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Company as are the words and phrases “Alpha-smart”, “100% Capital Safety”, “100% Liquidity”, ”price of risk”, “risk price”, and the symbols “(B)”, “(N)” and N*.