LAWRENCE CARREL | Dividend Stocks

Dividend-paying stocks can be a welcome addition to an investment portfolio. They generate passive income because you’re receiving a portion of profits from the companies you’re investing in. There's even an index called Dividend Aristocrats. These are companies that have increased dividends to investors in each of the last 25 years.

Lawrence Carrel a former writer and editor at the Wall Street Journal and current contributor to Forbes.com. He has spent his career creating insightful, engaging, high-impact content for a variety of audiences: consumers, retail investors, sophisticated advisors, high-net-worth individuals, and institutional investors. He's also the author of Dividend Stocks for Dummies, a guide to learning how to incorporate dividends into your portfolio.

Lawrence has contributed to various publications including The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Barron’s Online, Big Money, Brides, Economist Intelligence Unit, Financial Planning, Global Finance Magazine, Global Investment Technology, Guitar, Hard Assets Investor, Journal of Indexes, Major League Baseball.com, MarketView, Markit magazine, Musician.com, New York Observer, Offspring, Phoenix New Times, Razor, Reuters Money, Structured Products and Time Out New York.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Chloe (2s):

Stocks for Beginners

Larry (5s):

Dividends make up about 43% of the returns of the US stock market. And even if stocks go up a certain amount, that if you're getting a 9% return on the S&P over the past 80 years, almost half of that 40% comes from the dividends and the reinvesting of the dividends. So it's, dividends are a major part of the returns in the stock markets. So if you're not owning dividend stock, you're missing out.

Phil (27s):

Hi and welcome back to Stocks for Beginners. I'm Phil Muscatello. My guest today is financial writer, Lawrence Carrel aka Larry Carrel. Larry is the author of "Dividend Stocks for Dummies" and "ETFs for the Long Run". He's also been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Barron's Hard Assets and a list that's too long to go into here. Hi Larry.

Larry (52s):

Hi Phil. How are you?

Phil (53s):

Good. Thanks very much for coming on. So Larry, tell us a little bit about your background. You've been working in financial writing for quite a few years now. Yeah, I got into financial writing back in the 90s at the beginning of the dotcom era and I landed at The Wall Street Journal just as they were creating the website for the paper. And that was pretty early because it was before The New York Times. So I've been working on the internet, working in finance for a very long time. So at The Wall Street Journal did you have one of those stipple pictures they use for the authors?

Larry (1m 27s):

No, but I did manage to buy one and hired one of the artists to make one of my son when he was born. So I can send that to you if you want to see it.

Phil (1m 37s):

Yeah. Yeah. So tell us about writing the dummy book; "Dividends Stocks for Dummies".

Larry (1m 41s):

I was working at a website called Smart Money, which was a magazine that was owned by Dow Jones. And it was like Money magazine and that it was helping people invest in personal finance. And one day the editor said to me, "Would you like to write about ETFs?" And I'm like, "I have no idea what they are." He says, "I'm not really sure what they are either, but I think they're going to be really big."

Phil (2m 4s):

What year was that?

Larry (2m 5s):

This was in 2006 when the ETF industry was really starting to explode. And a lot of new companies were coming in, a lot of interesting ideas. So I started writing a column and I was one of the only people, if not the only person, writing about ETFs on the web. And then I got a call from John Wiley, a book publisher, and they said, "We can't find anybody else to write about ETFs. Would you like to write a book for us?" So I said, "Twist my arm." And I did. And you know, it came out, it was very successful. And then a couple years later, I actually ran into the guy who wrote "ETFs for Dummies" at a conference. And he said, you know, "Would you like to write a Dummies book? They keep asking me and I don't want to do anymore."

Larry (2m 47s):

So I talked to his agent and I got a gig with, Wiley was also the people that own the Dummies books. And they said, "Could you write Dividend Stocks for Dummies?" And I said, "Sure." And I guess the rest is history

Phil (3m 2s):

Just before we start talking about that, you've obviously been writing about finance through a number of ups and downs in the market, shall we say. What was it like working during that period of the Global Financial Crisis?

Larry (3m 16s):

You know, when you're writing about what's going on, it's very exciting. And I was talking to people and people had an idea that it was going to happen, but the broader community, the broader number of people in America who were reading and watching CNBC either had no idea or weren't acknowledging it. And so later when they said, "Why didn't financial journalists tell us?" It was like, well, a lot of us had been telling you, but you weren't paying attention. And then, you know, it's very scary. And the whole thing that was going on with a new president and is the economy going down? So yeah, it was a very hard time to write about that stuff.

Phil (3m 50s):

I think it's just interesting to reflect on it because a lot of people have never experienced a downmarket. And not only was that was a downmarket, but it was like a slow drip for two years or so. Where every day the market would get down a bit further, then down a bit further. So psychologically, it was very, very difficult to cope with.

Larry (4m 9s):

Yeah. And, you know, people kept waiting for the bounce back and I had an editor say, "Have we capitulated yet? Have we capitulated yet? And I don't think so", but yeah, it was very, very trying. And they were in the middle of a presidential campaign and the Bush administration was doing all kinds of wacky stuff to try to pull us out of it. And you know, a lot of people were saying, you know, "This is crazy what you're doing" and this and that. And yet most of the people who were in power weren't listening. So when then it did come back it had fallen by 50%. You know, you never know when they get back in but they say, you gotta put your money back in when blood is on the streets.

Larry (4m 50s):

So you have to start investing when things had gotten really cheap.

Phil (4m 56s):

That's an interesting word that you use capitulation because that's something that is talked about in finance that that's when everyone who's going to sell has sold and there's no one left to sell. That's basically what it is, isn't it?

Larry (5m 10s):

Yes. That is exactly what it is

Phil (5m 12s):

When blood is on the streets.

Larry (5m 13s):

You know, you don't want to buy at the high, you want to buy at the lows and, you know, sell when people are greedy, which would be now. And by when people don't want to go anywhere near stocks.

Phil (5m 29s):

That's interesting because psychologically, when everyone's rushing for the doors, that's the hardest time to buy.

Larry (5m 33s):

Yes. It's forcing you to go against your human instinct. Because it's a fearful time so you've got to fight the fear and put your money in when you're probably the least confident about the market. And that's when you have to invest. And that brings us to a good point to talk about dividends, because that's a thing that can be very helpful when the market is falling.

Phil (5m 52s):

Okay. Well, let's talk about investing in dividends. We'll get around to talking about how they can help out in terms of market downturns, but let's have a talk about income generating stocks and a couple of definitions. So what is a dividend?

Larry (6m 11s):

A dividend is a cash payment that essentially allows you to share in the profits of the company without having to sell your shares. Most of the time you buy a stock and you have to wait for the price of the shares to rise. And then you get out, hopefully when the shares are higher, and you book a profit. But then you don't own the stock anymore. So if you need the money, you have to sell your investment. And dividends allow you to generate money without selling the shares so that you can keep getting more money. What they do is, it's a profit-sharing plan. They basically are saying, "We want to reward you for staying our investor." Companies have different choices on what they can do with their money.

Larry (6m 51s):

They can reinvest it and grow the company. And that's what a lot of small companies do and growth companies. And they want to get the company bigger, they want to create new products. And so they reinvested in the company and they don't have money to pay out as dividends. And then there are companies that are paying down debt and they need the money so that they don't run into creditor problems. And then they can buy back shares, which does help boost the share price. And the last thing is to pay dividends. And what that does is you're rewarding your shareholders for sticking with you. So you get a certain number of dollars a year, and that way you get to keep the shares and then you keep getting those dollars every year.

Larry (7m 31s):

And that's a great way to make money off the stock without selling.

Phil (7m 35s):

And typically these are companies like banks and retailers and so forth. Are these are the kind of companies that we'll be talking about?

Larry (7m 44s):

Most of the time you're talking about mature companies and also companies that are very stable and can guarantee they're going to have the money to pay out the dividend. Because if their earnings go up and down or they're posting losses, they can't afford to risk running short on money by giving you the money. And so they have to hold onto it. So you're looking at very mature companies that have built a business and that is doing, pretty much doing well. And I guess the key areas for dividends are utilities, energy stocks, telecommunication stocks, consumer staples and lately, mature technology companies like Apple and Microsoft has started giving out dividends as well.

Phil (8m 27s):

So why should investors think about this and consider dividend stocks for their portfolio?

Larry (8m 31s):

Well, you get passive income. You don't have to do anything. You're getting money every quarter or every month, depending on how often they pay it. And that's, that's a nice surprise, you know, in your mailbox every couple of months. And then, you know, if you own enough shares, oh, you got money suddenly for Christmas presents. So that's the first thing, passive income. You are investing, as I said, in mature and stable companies. So you know that they aren't going to suddenly have a huge problem with their finances. This reduces your risk because you're investing in these stable companies. So you're not going to run into major problems. And most of these companies because of their stability and their maturity, because they're paying out the dividends and they're not huge growth companies, their stocks' prices are not jumping hugely like a Tesla.

Larry (9m 20s):

I mean, they're in a big growth phase. But on the flip side, when the market falls, they have much less volatility. So you don't lose nearly as much as you would from like a Tesla. Like, if Proctor and Gamble, is a classic consumer staples that pays dividends, it's a soap company, people are gonna be buying soap no matter what. So when the market falls, their price is gonna fall because maybe people will buy a little less. And with the market, they fall because most stocks fall together. But unlike Tesla, which, you know, I don't know, I haven't seen Tesla do it, but you know, large growth stocks or biotechnology stocks, they're going to take a big hit because they're very risky. And whether they're going to be able to come back after the fall is questionable, but you know, people are pretty sure a soap company is going to come back.

Larry (10m 6s):

So you're not going to lose as much. They're not going to sell off as much.

Phil (10m 14s):

Larry, let's talk about a couple of other definitions here. Price to dividend ratio is an important ratio to consider. Tell us about that.

Larry (10m 24s):

Price to dividend ratio is known as your yield. And your yield is the percentage return on the investment. So yield changes the stock price. You know, people, especially in this kind of environment where they're not getting a lot of yield from bonds, they want to guarantee what the rate of return will be. So yield is a major component of what you're getting. It's not the amount of money you're getting, because if the dividend is $2 a year, if the stock is $50, you're getting a yield of 4%. But if the stock goes up to a hundred dollars, now your yield has fallen to 2%. And the main thing to remember about yield is your yield doesn't change with the stock price. Your yield is what it was the day you bought it. And so as the stock price gets higher, you have the same yield that you had.

Larry (11m 6s):

And if you bought it at 50, you have that 4% yield. Even when it goes up to a hundred, it's the new people buying it. They're getting the 2% yield.

Phil (11m 13s):

But that's not a bad thing. If the price is going up at the same time as you get a dividend, that would be not a bad outcome either.

Larry (11m 25s):

That's exactly what you want. That's the perfect scenario.

Phil (11m 28s):

Not that we always achieve it.

Larry (11m 29s):

No.

Phil (11m 30s):

So what's the difference then between that and the price earnings ratio.

Larry (11m 32s):

Yeah. Price earnings ratio is you take the price and you divided by the earnings.

Phil (11m 37s):

So this is the actual learnings that the company makes, not what they're paying out in a dividend.

Larry (11m 41s):

Right, the dividend is a small portion of the earnings. Earnings are the profits and they are sharing the profits with you, but it's usually a smaller percentage. And that's kind of the pay out ratio. In where you take the amount of the dividends and you divide that by the earnings to find out what percentage of the earnings are being paid out to the shareholders. And usually, you know, in a good company, it's 40%. And a company that's really not paying out a lot, it's like 20%. And you know, if they're not reinvesting a lot of the money. By giving out the dividends, prevents them from doing a lot of stupid things like, you know, mergers and acquisitions that ended up not really helping the company at all. So pay out ratio is important. Price to earnings is the classic ratio that all stock investors use to determine whether a stock is cheaper now.

Phil (12m 28s):

Yeah. And that's really important to consider because you don't want a company paying out too much of their earnings as dividends because they're not reinvesting for the future. Like you say, if they're keeping too much, they can do stupid things. And tell us about some of those stupid things. Let's just dive into that just for a moment.

Larry (12m 44s):

Well, you know, company's making a lot of profits and you've got a CEO who wants to make his mark on the company.

Phil (12m 51s):

Build an empire?

Larry (12m 52s):

Build an empire, prove his worth, prove, you know, he deserves the job and, you know, become a famous CEO because he's doing all these great things. So they may get invested into a lot of side projects that get the company to create products that are not necessarily the main core business of the company, and that can distract the actual business. And usually those things don't necessarily work out. A lot of times they fail and it's really for the CEO's ego that we're doing it and it's not best for the shareholders. So that's the first thing. And then the other thing is mergers and acquisition. They always talk about synergy that the two companies can help cut costs and make better profits.

Larry (13m 32s):

And I would say that, you know, more than half the time, that's probably right. But if you've got 45% of those companies not working out, not creating more synergies, then you're essentially spending a lot of money that could be paid back to you, the shareholder, and you're spending money to buy these companies that are not necessarily making the company more profitable. So these are things that CEOs and boards do for their own ego and self-gratification to show how wonderful they are.

Phil (13m 58s):

Gee, that's a great explanation. It's good to know how much ego's involved in management, isn't there?

Larry (14m 5s):

Yeah, I mean, look at these guys, look at how much they're paying themselves. It's a lot of ego.

Phil (14m 13s):

So there's also a thing called dividend reinvestment plans. Tell us about those.

Larry (14m 17s):

A dividend reinvest in plan is where you buy stock, share stock and you usually buy it from the company, you're buying from a broker and you fill out forms with the company. What happens is they take the dividends and instead of sending you the check that you can then put into your bank account, they just reinvest it and they buy fractional shares of the company's stock. So that way you keep building your portfolio. Say you buy a hundred shares of stock and then they are paying that 2% yield. And you're getting like $2 a year. And as they gradually build, they buy you like 2% of a share the first year. And then as you have more shares, you get more dividends. And it's just compounding like compounding interest. So you build up more shares, your portfolio grows.

Larry (14m 59s):

And as your portfolio grows, you get more dividends. And then as you get more dividends, you buy even more shares, which increases your portfolio instead of a vicious circle, it's a wonderful circle.

Phil (15m 10s):

And presumably this is a way of dollar cost averaging as well. So that if the stock price goes down, you're buying that at a cheaper price.

Larry (15m 19s):

Yeah. It's automatic investing. It takes the thought process out of it. You're buying like once a month and you get it if the market's up, if the market's down. You keep buying. So it forces you to invest when you might not want to, like if the market's down, but at that time you're getting the stocks cheaper. So it's actually a great thing because you might not think of investing when the market's down, but because the dividend reinvestment plan just keeps rolling along, you buy shares when the prices are cheap. And then of course, when the market goes up, you buy shares as they're going up. So it is dollar cost averaging, and it takes a lot of the thought process out of it. And they're really great for new investors and investors without a lot of money because the minimum investment is usually one share.

Phil (16m 1s):

Sorry, explain how that works.

Larry (16m 3s):

You buy one share, say you buy one share on Procter and Gamble. You, you know, get the forms to enter their dividend reinvestment plan. And then that's it. You know, you're a stockholder. Most of them don't have minimums. Some of them do have minimums but it's usually not a lot. And it's a good way for people without a lot of money to get investing. And usually you're investing in companies that are not very risky.

Phil (16m 29s):

So how can dividend investments help you to weather markets when they inevitably go down?

Larry (16m 36s):

Okay. So I own a stock, I think it's Phillips 66. So they pay like a 5% dividend yield. So if the stock falls, I'm still getting 5% a year on my investment and that way I'm still making money. And it definitely cuts the losses I have. I mean, they're paper losses, it cuts the losses in the stock price. So you keep getting money every year even though the market could be down. And also because, as I said before, dividend stocks are usually mature companies and stable companies that usually typically fall a lot less than major market corrections in downturns. So you lose a lot less there and the dividends keep the money coming in.

Larry (17m 17s):

So it's a nice little, once again, wonderful circle.

Phil (17m 20s):

You referred just a little while ago to bonds as a way of earning an income. But these days they don't actually pay a lot of yield, do they?

Larry (17m 30s):

No, and even what are called high yield bonds, which are very risky, are not paying a lot of yield. So in perspective, the US ten-year treasury bond is giving you 1.6% on your return annually. So, I mean, that's not great. The S&P market as a whole has a yield of 2%, which is basically the average of all the yields in the index. So then, you know, investment grade bonds for companies that are very stable or paying close to two and a half percent, which is, you know, you're locking your money up. You're not really getting paid a lot for that. And then if you buy a high-risk bond back in five or six years ago, you could get close to 10% on those. And now those are down to 4 or 5%. So you're really not getting paid for the amount of risk you're taking out.

Phil (18m 14s):

I mean, we're talking about two different kinds of bonds here, aren't we? There's government bonds and then there's corporate bonds.

Larry (18m 23s):

Right. So the treasuries are government bonds and they pay less because they're very safe. And then the investment grade corporate bonds pay, you know, close to what stocks you're paying because they're pretty safe. And then the high yield bonds should pay you a lot more interest because they have a high risk of defaulting on their credit.

Phil (18m 40s):

Because that's the way it works, isn't it? Like a good company, that's a good credit risk. They're not going to be required to pay as high a yield as a company that is taking more risk. That's the way it works, isn't it?

Larry (18m 54s):

Right, that's the classic risk and reward equation that if you need to be paid more for taking it on higher risk, if you're going to loan money to a company that could possibly not pay it back to you, in the meantime, I need to be paid higher amount now in case you do stop paying me. Whereas if I'm 99% sure you're going to pay me back this money on the bond, they don't have to pay me nearly as much because it's like almost as safe as a US treasury. I mean, you know, corporate bonds could always run into problems. But once again, you're buying a bond in a stable, mature company like Procter and Gamble. I think that you have very little chance of that company going out of business.

Phil (19m 35s):

A fund manager I was speaking to this week has become very debt shy, especially for growth companies. Because when he lived through the financial crisis, that's when those companies defaulted, went bankrupt. Because if a company's got a lot of debt, they don't have a lot of protection to weather any kind of storms like that, don't they?

Larry (19m 55s):

Right, I mean, they have to be paying off that interest every couple of months. And that's worth a significant part of their profits. And if they're losing money, then they don't have profits. They gotta be pulling it from other parts of the company. And so, yes, it's a high risk. And that's actually a problem, which is a different conversation, but bonds, high-risk bonds can be problematic now because people are so desperate for yield. They're buying these high yield bonds that are not yielding much and the company's investment foundations or universities or institutional investors need to own bonds. And so companies that really should have gone under and gone bankrupt are being kept afloat because people want the bonds.

Larry (20m 37s):

So they're willing to buy the bonds to help these companies keep the businesses going. When, you know, they really don't have the money and they're probably zombie companies. And this can be a big problem if we have major defaults.

Phil (20m 49s):

Okay, well let's just zoom out a bit and look at constructing a portfolio. Beginners who are approaching the market, and I do understand that a lot of people come to this podcast because they've heard of GameStop or AMC, and they want to get, you know, sudden huge profits and think that they're stock market wizards. But that's not like it is. I mean, I always try and talk about a slow and steady approach to investing. So without making any recommendations and only talking generally, how should new investors start looking at the market and constructing and managing a portfolio?

Larry (21m 25s):

Well, the US market has come back a huge amount since the downfall, the correction last year in March. And there's the risk that, you know, the fed is going to raise interest rates, which could have a detrimental effect on the stock market and probably will have a detrimental effect on the stock market. So it's a time that you have to be very careful what you're investing in. And as I said, these high growth companies are going to be the ones that usually take a big hit if there's a major downturn. And stocks like GameStop and AMC, you have to look deep into their financials and see are they making profits? And are the profits growing each quarter or each year? And I think that the reason that those stocks are so unusual is that they haven't been making profits and people are betting that they're going to come back.

Larry (22m 10s):

So to start out, you know, you might want to invest in mutual funds, which gives you an automatic diversification or ETFs. Which that way with a small amount of a minimum investment, you can get a diversified portfolio. But if you're gonna look at individual stocks, you have to really determine what your time horizon for owning the stock is. Because you can just hold it for less than a year, or are you going to hold it for a couple years or 5 years or 20 years? And what is your risk tolerance? If the market falls or your stocks fall 20%, are you going to be able to sleep at night? And if you can say, "I can weather the downturn and I can wait until they come back", then you've got a higher risk tolerance. And if you say, "I'm not going to be able to sleep, I'm going to be, you know, anxious and really, you know, constantly worried if my stocks, all 20%, that I'm losing a lot of money,” then you have a lower risk tolerance.

Larry (22m 57s):

So you have to evaluate this about yourself. And again, the time horizon to determine what kind of stocks to buy. And so then you need to look at the stocks and, you know, these high growth stocks, a lot of these new companies that have come out, what kind of a history do they have and how are their earnings? And if they're not making earnings and you're buying companies that are growing, that are posting losses, those are companies are, like, high risk of going under if the market turns. So you might want to start with, like I said, the stable companies, more mature companies, companies you know, companies' names you've heard of.

Larry (23m 37s):

And, like I said, Proctor and Gamble is a classic and other consumer staples, food stocks. And then even companies like, you know, Microsoft and Apple, which are huge and have built great reputations and are pretty stable companies that, you know, you might want to invest in companies that are well-known and have like real history and have shown the management knows how to manage the company in bad times as well as good.

Phil (23m 58s):

And of course, diversification is important as well. Realizing that you don't want to have everything in one company or one sector. I mean, it's like ETFs, someone will buy an S&P 500 ETF not understanding that investing in that basically gives you a major exposure to companies like Apple and Microsoft. So there's no point in going and buying them otherwise if you've got an ETF and then you're just going to be mirroring that holding,

Larry (24m 25s):

Right. I mean, diversification is basically not putting all your eggs in one basket. And you want to spread out your risk because if, you know, one sector takes a big hit, like energy, oil or, I don't know, electric vehicles. Then if you've got all your money invested in that, then you're going to, you know, probably not be able to make it back because who knows if they're going to come back. So you want to have like some in mature companies, some in growth companies, some in somewhere in the middle so that you are getting like a broader range of returns and investments that can lower your risk. I mean, that's really what it all comes down to is how much risk do you want to take? And you want to make sure that you don't lose all your money if the market turns against you.

Phil (25m 5s):

And just getting back to it before, when you were saying about, can you sleep at night when your portfolio goes down by 20% or your stock goes down 20%? People don't actually know that until it happens to them though.

Larry (25m 21s):

Right, yeah. Atheist become, you know, believers in God, when they're in the foxhole, is like the famous expression.

Phil (25m 29s):

That's a great expression. So this is a question without notice. What did you personally learn writing the book?

Larry (25m 34s):

I learned that dividends make up about 43% of the returns of the US stock market. That even if stocks go up a certain amount, that if you're getting a 9% return on the S&P over the past 80 years, almost half of that 40% comes from the dividends and the reinvesting of the dividends. So it's, dividends are a major part of the returns of the stock markets. If you're not owning dividends stock, you're missing out. Number two, I learned that companies that pay dividends aren't obligated to pay the dividends. They do it because they want to, you know, encourage people to buy their stocks. Whereas a bond, as we were talking about, pays interest, it's called fixed income, because it has to pay you that interest rate every six months or every year.

Larry (26m 16s):

But when the market turns down and companies are suddenly in a cash crunch and they can't pay all their bills, the first thing they're going to cut is the dividend. Because there's immediate money that they've got in their pocket. And it's like, "Well, why do I need to give it out to the shareholders when I need to pay this money off to pay my bills to keep the company going?" So dividends are not guaranteed, no matter how long it's going. And another thing is that companies increase dividends. A lot of companies increase the dividends, and those are the best ones to buy. Where every year or two they will increase the amount of the pay out. So your dividend keeps growing. If the first year you're getting that $2 and then the next year you're getting $2 and a quarter.

Larry (26m 56s):

And then the next year you're getting $2.50. Your returns are growing without, again, having to do anything. It's passive income and it's growing passive income. And, oh, there a group of dividends called the Dividend Aristocrats. And these are 25 companies that have been raising their dividends to pay outs for 25 straight years without interruption. So these are great companies to buy if you want to be a dividend investor because they will keep boosting your returns. It's fantastic.

Phil (27m 29s):

Wow, Larry, that's great. So is this book still available and people can buy it?

Larry (27m 36s):

Yeah, it's out there, it's on Amazon and it's the yellow dummies book. And I have a new updated edition called "Investing with Dividends". 'Cause I wrote this one during the financial crisis when all these stocks were very cheap and now they're not quite the same price and so they cut a lot of those stocks out. But again, the best sectors for dividends are utilities because people always got to pay for their electricity, telecommunications because it's almost a utility, so Verizon and AT&T pay like 6% yields on their stocks, energy companies do well and consumer staples, which comes back to Proctor and Gamble. You know, you buy soap.

Larry (28m 18s):

Everybody needs to buy soap every month or whatever and

Phil (28m 20s):

Well, you hope so.

Larry (28m 22s):

Right, well the majority of people are buying soap and toothpaste.

Phil (28m 25s):

Larry, thank you very much for your time today. There's been really great explanations.

Larry (28m 29s):

Thank you very much for having me, Phil.

Stocks for Beginners is for information and educational purposes only. It isn’t financial advice, and you shouldn’t buy or sell any investments based on what you’ve heard here. Any opinion or commentary is the view of the speaker only not Stocks for Beginners. This podcast doesn’t replace professional advice regarding your personal financial needs, circumstances or current situation.