The Dividend Mailbox®

AI can hand you a confident, polished answer in seconds. So can a stock screener. But a number without context can lead you exactly where you don't want to go. In Episode 63, Greg walks through what happened when we ran our McDonald's ($MCD) report through an AI model. It flagged a drop in return on invested capital as a sign of trouble. We saw a 12% return during a year the economy shut down and called it a win. Same number, opposite conclusions. The difference was knowing what drove i...

This morning, a small kitchen-and-bath supplier nobody's ever heard of went up 200% before lunch. By the afternoon, it was already sliding back down. Meanwhile, one of the most boring yet beloved businesses in America just got cheaper than it's been in five years. In today’s market, it's easy to miss which one is the actual opportunity. This month, Greg starts with FGI Industries ($FGI), a $9 million company that briefly saw a day's worth of trading change hands worth $1.5 billion. He w...

A century-old tech company just took a gut punch from Wall Street. A century-old oil giant hasn't had an exciting headline in years. Ten years from now, which one do you actually want to own? In this episode, Greg takes the long view on two very different dividend payers. The first is IBM ($IBM), a stock that ran from the low $200s to a high near $325 over the past year as its quantum computing story caught fire. It then dropped back to around $205 after disappointing contract delays spooked ...

The news says the market is down, up, sideways... but which market? The Dow, the S&P 500, SCHD, gold, real estate—on any given day, they're all doing something different. If you don't know which market is actually yours, sooner or later, one of the others will seduce you into a move you'll regret. In Episode 60, Greg takes on a question that sounds almost too simple: What is the market? Using six real-world examples—from dividend ETFs to Denver office towers to SpaceX ($SPCX)—he shows how...

Everyone's talking about what AI is going to disrupt. The question most investors aren't asking: What happens after that disruption, and who actually wins? The obvious answer and the right answer are rarely the same thing. In this episode, Greg introduces a framework he first encountered through Howard Marks: first-level vs. second-level thinking. First-level thinking reacts to what's in front of you. Second-level thinking follows the chain of consequences and the ripple effects most pe...