👋 ASB Partners Nuggets 7.4.25
This is a short weekly email that covers a few things I’ve found interesting during the week.
Interesting Links/Reads
Many links are sourced from Marginal Revolution (bold and italics are my own to highlight what I found particularly interesting)
Finance professors have long tsk-tsked about investors’ love for cash payouts. But a recent report shows what people actually do with them and why they prefer receiving cash: because it works.
One of the original studies on dividends in the early 1960s said people shouldn’t care about the payouts. Maximizing wealth is the point, and dividends are just part of investors’ total return. Any cash a company pays out reduces its value by an equal amount, after all.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway once paid 10 cents in 1967. Buffett quipped that he “must have been in the bathroom” when the decision was taken. Owning Berkshire has been spectacular and probably would have been less so if it had made regular cash payments, even if you reinvested them after taxes.
The secret seems to be that companies paying chunky dividends also tend to have value and quality characteristics. Those are two factors associated with long-term investment success and also describe Berkshire’s portfolio.
2.Tyler Cowen travel tips by Tyler Cowen July 2, 2025 at 12:26 am in Food and Drink Travel Travels
That is my latest column in The Free Press. Here is one excerpt from the middle:
I am a fan of going places where things are happening, whether good news or bad, at least if the locales are sufficiently safe. When communism fell, I rented a car and drove around Eastern Europe for one of my most interesting and memorable trips. More recently, I visited El Salvador and Argentina (repeat visits in both cases) to see what was going on with El Salvador president Nayib Bukele’s radical imprisonment policies and the free-market reforms of Argentina’s Javier Milei. I do not pretend to completely grasp the problems of either country, but my understanding is richer than before. I also found that the locals are keen to narrate their points of view, which makes the trip more interesting.
And from the very end:
Finally, I have a radical travel suggestion. Perhaps it is not for families or for the frail, but seasoned travelers should consider it. Imagine you have been to many places, and you are wondering where to go next. Select a country (putting aside danger) where you are quite sure you do not want to go, simply because it does not interest you much. Go there.
Washing dishes. Normal people use “real” plates, bowls, cups, and utensils for meals. Which means rinsing, loading and unloading, and restacking multiple times per day. The drudgery easily adds up to hours every week.
What’s the alternative? Go fully disposable. CostCo sells cheap, high-quality disposable plates, bowls, cups, and utensils in bulk. My whole family uses these products for virtually all meals, so instead of washing them when we’re done, we throw them away. Even setting and clearing the table is easier with disposables, because they’re lighter and you don’t have to worry about breaking them. (And for the same reasons, kids can start helping years earlier).
Podcast/Videos
Show notes from Peter Attia Podcast “The Drive”
I hope you enjoyed it.
Adam