📅 On This Day
SEC's Bold 13F Overhaul Drowns Under Avalanche of Public Protest
In July 2020, the SEC proposed raising the 13F reporting threshold from $100 million to $3.5 billion — a move that would have reduced the number of filers by roughly 90%, from around 5,000 to about 550. Critics were nearly unanimous: by one analysis, 99% of the 2,262 comment letters opposed the change, with just 24 in support. By late October 2020, the SEC had quietly shelved the proposal.
Opponents warned the change would let activist investors quietly accumulate large stakes, unseen by the market.
🇺🇸 US
Source: SEC.gov; Federal Register
🌍 Around the World
Estonia's Tax System Turns Dividend Policy Into National Philosophy
Estonia operates a notably distinctive corporate tax model: retained earnings generally go untaxed until they are actually distributed to shareholders. That design, verified as of 2026, means dividends aren't an afterthought — they are the moment taxation arrives. Companies like Tallinna Vesi and Tallinna Kaubamaja Grupp on the Tallinn exchange make Estonia a quietly fascinating case study for investors who care about how tax architecture shapes payout culture.
Latvia follows a similar distribution-based model, making the Baltic region a rare laboratory for dividend-driven tax design.
🇪🇪 EE
Source: Estonian Tax and Customs Board; PwC Tax Summaries
🔥 Dividend Streak
Walmart's Five-Cent Dividend Seed Has Grown for 52 Straight Years
Walmart's dividend story begins in 1974 with a payout of five cents a share — and it has been raised every single year since, for 52 consecutive years. The company itself traces back to a single discount store Sam Walton opened in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962, built on one conviction: sell for less than anyone else. That original nickel now rests atop a business doing over $700 billion in annual revenue with a trillion-dollar market cap.
Few streaks in the Dividend Kings universe capture the raw power of compounding quite like Walmart's journey from five cents.
WMT — Walmart CDR (CAD Hedged)
Source: SureDividend.com — Dividend Kings: WMT
🔥 Dividend Streak
Walmart's Five-Cent Dividend Seed Has Grown for 52 Straight Years
Walmart's dividend story begins in 1974 with a payout of five cents a share — and it has been raised every single year since, for 52 consecutive years. The company itself traces back to a single discount store Sam Walton opened in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962, built on one conviction: sell for less than anyone else. That original nickel now rests atop a business doing over $700 billion in annual revenue with a trillion-dollar market cap.
Few streaks in the Dividend Kings universe capture the raw power of compounding quite like Walmart's journey from five cents.
WMT — Walmart Inc
Source: SureDividend.com — Dividend Kings: WMT
🔥 Dividend Streak
Walmart's Five-Cent Dividend Seed Has Grown for 52 Straight Years
Walmart's dividend story begins in 1974 with a payout of five cents a share — and it has been raised every single year since, for 52 consecutive years. The company itself traces back to a single discount store Sam Walton opened in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962, built on one conviction: sell for less than anyone else. That original nickel now rests atop a business doing over $700 billion in annual revenue with a trillion-dollar market cap.
Few streaks in the Dividend Kings universe capture the raw power of compounding quite like Walmart's journey from five cents.
WMT — Walmart Inc.
Source: SureDividend.com — Dividend Kings: WMT
💡 Did You Know
Preferred Stock Was Born to Give Investors Safety Without Breaking Companies
During the canal-and-railroad era, companies faced an uncomfortable bind: issuing common stock diluted shareholders and was hard to sell in downturns, while bonds piled on debt that could force bankruptcy. Preferred stock was the elegant compromise — it promised a fixed dividend paid ahead of common shareholders, yet counted as equity rather than debt, and a skipped dividend wouldn't trigger insolvency. Two centuries on, the underlying logic remains remarkably unchanged.
Preferred stock is, at its heart, a 200-year-old workaround that still quietly structures billions in capital today.
Source: Evans, 'Early History of Preferred Stock' (American Economic Review, 1929)