📅 On This Day
Facebook Loses $120 Billion in a Single Devastating Session
On July 26, 2018, Facebook shares fell 19% after weak second-quarter results and a warning that revenue growth would slow as the company invested more heavily in privacy and security. The single-session wipeout — roughly $120 billion in market value — stood as the largest one-day loss by any U.S. company at the time. Facebook wasn't yet paying a dividend in 2018, but the crash delivered a lesson income investors never forget: even the most dominant business models can stumble, and the market collects its dues immediately.
Eight years on, META now pays a dividend — a reminder that corporate fortunes, like market moods, can change dramatically.
META — WisdomTree Industrial Metals Enhanced
🇺🇸 US
Source: AOL; The Wall Street Journal
📅 On This Day
Facebook Loses $120 Billion in a Single Devastating Session
On July 26, 2018, Facebook shares fell 19% after weak second-quarter results and a warning that revenue growth would slow as the company invested more heavily in privacy and security. The single-session wipeout — roughly $120 billion in market value — stood as the largest one-day loss by any U.S. company at the time. Facebook wasn't yet paying a dividend in 2018, but the crash delivered a lesson income investors never forget: even the most dominant business models can stumble, and the market collects its dues immediately.
Eight years on, META now pays a dividend — a reminder that corporate fortunes, like market moods, can change dramatically.
META — Meta CDR (CAD Hedged)
🇺🇸 US
Source: AOL; The Wall Street Journal
📅 On This Day
Facebook Loses $120 Billion in a Single Devastating Session
On July 26, 2018, Facebook shares fell 19% after weak second-quarter results and a warning that revenue growth would slow as the company invested more heavily in privacy and security. The single-session wipeout — roughly $120 billion in market value — stood as the largest one-day loss by any U.S. company at the time. Facebook wasn't yet paying a dividend in 2018, but the crash delivered a lesson income investors never forget: even the most dominant business models can stumble, and the market collects its dues immediately.
Eight years on, META now pays a dividend — a reminder that corporate fortunes, like market moods, can change dramatically.
META — Meta Platforms Inc.
🇺🇸 US
Source: AOL; The Wall Street Journal
🌍 Around the World
Hong Kong Levies Zero Tax on Dividends — With One Important Caveat
Hong Kong imposes no withholding tax, no capital gains tax, and no personal income tax on dividends whatsoever — making HKEX-listed holdings among the most tax-efficient income investments available to shareholders of any nationality. The catch arrives before the money ever reaches Hong Kong: mainland Chinese companies listed as H-shares face a 10% PRC withholding tax on distributions at source. The effective rate, it turns out, depends on where the company is domiciled, not simply where its shares trade.
Zero Hong Kong tax sounds perfect — but always check whether a company's roots run through Beijing first.
🇭🇰 HK
Source: Hong Kong Inland Revenue Department; HKEX investor education
🔥 Dividend Streak
Universal Corporation's Rich Yield Carries a Tobacco-Scented Warning
Universal Corporation has raised its dividend every year since 1972 — a 54-consecutive-year streak that earns it a place among the Dividend Kings — yet its roughly 6.7% yield may say more about risk than generosity. As the world's largest leaf-tobacco merchant, Universal sits squarely in the path of cigarette's secular decline, and earnings per share trended downward across 2010–2023. A fat yield on a long streak is not always a reward; sometimes it is the price the market demands for holding on.
When a Dividend King yields near 6.7% and EPS has trended lower for over a decade, the streak deserves scrutiny.
UVV — Universal Corporation
Source: Sure Dividend (suredividend.com/dividend-kings-uvv/)
💡 Did You Know
Buffett's Crisis Playbook: Preferred Stock, Fat Coupons, and Warrants
Between September 2008 and August 2011, Warren Buffett deployed $13 billion into preferred stock across three blue-chip companies in distress — Goldman Sachs at 10%, General Electric at 10%, and Bank of America at 6%. The formula never wavered: arrive when the stock is in freefall, claim seniority, charge a crisis-grade coupon, and attach warrants for common-stock upside. All three positions were repaid at par, and the warrants added billions more — a masterclass in using preferred dividends as both income and insurance.
Preferred stock gave Buffett safety on the downside and a golden ticket to the upside — all in one instrument.
BRK-B — Berkshire Hathaway Inc
🇺🇸 US
Source: Berkshire Hathaway; The Wall Street Journal