Recent Investments for May 1, 2025

Good Morning,

I wanted to let you know that I added to existing positions in four companies this morning. Three of those positions were initiated last month. The other one was initiated two months ago or so. I will keep adding to those until they reach my minimum ownership range, before I evaluate further.

Note that I had high hopes for the turbulence of the past month to initiate/add to positions in several quality companies that are seldom on sale below 25 times forward earnings. Sadly, while they were sold off a little bit, they still remained richly valued. The buy the dip mentality and the quality compounder boom we are in seem to have shifted valuations to a permanently high plateau (wink wink). A few include the likes of Microsoft, Waste Management, ADP, Moody's etc.

There are a few other recent dividend initiator companies I wanted to buy/add to, but unfortunately they seem to be sending out mixed signals. Perhaps the AI Boom they are investing in is going to be costly, or they simply do not care about dividends and use them simply to check a box, rather than truly live the dividend growth motto. The companies in question include Meta and Alphabet, both of which initiated dividends in 2024, and then raised them by 5% in 2025. This is on the low side. My dividend signaling theory shows me that perhaps this is not the best use of my capital. Perhaps these companies are telling us that the CAPEX spend is going to be too much. Whether it materializes into incrementally higher revenues and profits at a good rate of return, remains to be seen. Hopefully for their shareholders, they are not just throwing money into a bottomless pit of competition, which arbs away profits as capacity explodes beyond can be profitably used. In a way, this echoes the telecom capex cycle of the late 1990s. I am too old perhaps however, so maybe take those rants with a grain of salt. Or perhaps I am salty that these otherwise good income streams do not fit all my boxes neatly. It's good to try and think in terms of trade-offs, as the future is not set in stone. Let's circle back in 2035.

Anyways, I added to the following companies today: