This is the stuff of which bestsellers are made. -- or at least movies starring Michael Douglas.
Yeah. I know. I am at risk of sounding like an English major, but I have to wonder... if this thing were fiction (we wish) would the writer come under criticism for using a company like Procter and Gamble as the extreme hill-hopper?
In fiction, would it be considered way too much of a cliche to use a stock that many consider to be the icon of boredom?
PG can sure stay relatively flat for really long periods of time. And the dividend is never into a big percentage return. (Huge percentage dividends are not usually a good thing anyway.) But PG's dividend has a proud history of increasing annually for more than 50 years and has been paid since the company started. Last month the increase for this year was announced - a 9.5% increase. (Hold on! Do not read this too fast and get all excited. That was the percentage of increase of the dividend, not the percent yield.) The split history is long and consistent. Splits, of course, do not mean instant returns. It seems like the highest it ever went before a split was somewhere just shy of 120....not sure though.
And Salybow is right. A lot of Cincinnatians love their P&G stock. In fact, there are those who cling to it for decade after decade, often in the face of standard financial planning advice that always warns about eggs and baskets. There are Cincinnatians who marry their P&G stock to have and to hold ever after. (Happily ever after? - Time will always tell.)
Boring though the stock can be considered to be...most of the time...there was another drastic drop -- huge--and that one was for real. It was during the reign of Durk Jager, an unpopular CEO who left in 2000 -- I think that was the year. Jager was the one on duty when the stock took a particularly drastic hit. I was told by a Cincinnati broker that when that one happened, their Cincinnati phones were ringing like crazy from Cincinnatians who were saying, "Buy more PG!"
Durk Jager was followed by A. G.Lafley who just retired. Now there is a new guy. I heard the new guy speak at the stockholders' meeting last fall. He comes from inside which I happen to like in a CEO -- but who really knows what the new guy will be like.
Disclosure: I obviously own a a little bit of P&G. (I think it might be the law in Cincinnati.) But please keep in mind that I am certainly not in a position, professional or otherwise, to go around recommending certain stocks.
If Warren Buffett ever gets fat fingers, we might be in serious trouble. He holds a chunk of P&G. He sells some once in a while to buy something else, like a railroad I guess. I have to wonder if P&G is Warren Buffett's money-market account.
I realize that I am digressing this morning. And please keep in mind that this is only babble. I do not know anything. But I have a little fascination with what just happened in the market and I guess I am fretting it out here. I wonder if we will ever know what really happened. It is the stuff of fiction -- but so sadly and eerily true.
I have been left though with knowing that I will hang on to my own philosophy of trading stocks. Remember that old ad for the phone company yellow pages, "Let your fingers do the walking." Well, my own fingers will continue to be the only ones doing the walking when I trade online. And walk they will...oh sooooooo slowly.
Boomer the Turtle -- the kind of turtle that is indigenous to Cincinnati
PS: Oh, and btw, about that spin we're in, here's a link to a short commentary that played on NPR yesterday.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=126615124
Boomer