🚨A quick word: I'll be a guest speaker at the Blossom Investor event in Chicago on Tuesday, October 7th. Grab a 15% discount with DAPPER15.🚨 Don't you just love hearing old people talk? Last week, my earholes were pleasantly penetrated with the wise words of Howard Marks on the My First Million Podcast and one idea stuck. Getting ideas to stick like Band-aids can be quite the challenge when we're buried with a daily avalanche of information. Unless Elon Musk is going to put an memory chip...
3 days ago • 4 min read
It finally happened. For the first time in 538 days, the CEO of a company I own bought more of his stock with personal cash. Joey Agree, CEO of and you'll never believe it Agree Realty (ADC) bought 4,850 shares x $72.15 for $349,928 of his own money. No stock options, grants or gifts from the company. CEO-Buys.com When a CEO buys their own stock, it's a great sign because they're telling us loud and clear they expect the share price to be higher than it is right now. And, when you couple that...
10 days ago • 4 min read
What if a company that's been paying monthly dividends for 56 years was using an accounting trick to make their investments look better than they really are? That's exactly what I discovered about Realty Income (O) - 'the monthly dividend company' - and it made me start selling my shares. I was reading through some Seeking Alpha comments when I stumbled across someone pointing out an accounting trick that Realty Income uses. I often find the comment sections more valuable than the actual...
17 days ago • 4 min read
What do you do when a stock you've held for 5 years starts paying out more money than it makes? That's exactly what happened with my Starbucks (SBUX) investment. My very first Starbucks share cost me $83.72 back in November 2019. That share has paid me $11.22 in dividends for a total return of 19% - pretty bad when the boring old S&P 500 had a total return of 119% over the same time! Some of the main reasons for selling after their Q325 Earnings: Their dividend payout jumped from 75% to 137%...
24 days ago • 3 min read
Personal reasons that are none of your business. Thanks for reading the newsletter! Kidding, kidding. But seriously — I recently sold 100 shares of VICI Properties (VICI). It’s temporary, but first, here’s some quick background for those who don’t know… Back in 2015, Caesars Entertainment (CZR) was broke. Like, bankruptcy-level broke. So in 2017, they got creative. They took all their casino buildings — places like Caesars Palace and Harrah’s — and spun them off into a new company: VICI...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
What if everything you thought you knew about predicting stock prices was wrong? I just finished re-reading A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel, and it reminded me of something important: the future is unknown, unknowable and nobody knows what's going to happen. Not you. Not me. Not the smartest analyst on Wall Street. Not even the most advanced AI. Yet every day, we see people and websites throwing around "intrinsic value" calculations like they're scientific facts. But those...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
I wrote this letter for my almost 17 and 18-year-old daughters, but this could be helpful to any young person. Feel free to forward it to them... I want to share something with you that I wish someone had told me when I was your age. It’s about money—but not in a boring way. This is about your freedom. The most valuable thing money can buy isn’t stuff—it’s time. The ability to do what you want, when you want. That’s real wealth. Some people even call it “F-You Money.” It means you’re in...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
This week, I got a helpful reminder from Carter the investing Cat on Blossom: From Blossomsocial.com To quote the wise investing feline: "Take a look at an aggressive growth or momentum fund. Find their holdings and start doing your research on those companies. The funds’ managers and analysts have already done most of the work for you. Just cherry pick their selections." Immediately, I thought of an ETF on my watchlist that I love the idea behind, but probably would never buy: the...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Morningstar just released its list of top dividend funds, so I thought it was a great time to share a few highlights with y'all... The article covers both ETFs and mutual funds, but I’m focusing on ETFs since anyone with a brokerage account can buy them. Mutual funds can be trickier, depending on where your account is located. I recommend checking out Morningstar's complete list HERE. Both mutual funds and ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) are great "easy button" choices for most regular...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
I'm about a quarter of the way through Ron Chernow's massive biography on President U.S. Grant, and it's shocking how much of a loser he was. At the dawn of the Civil War, Grant was 39, battling alcoholism, had a string of failed business ventures, was swindled and stolen from multiple times and was pretty much broke and working as a lowly clerk in his fathers leather shop in Galena, IL while having his two younger brothers as his bosses. And I find myself liking him MORE because his constant...
2 months ago • 4 min read