📅 On This Day
Dow Surges on Nixon's Wage Freeze, Cheering the Wrong Thing
On August 16, 1971, the Dow leapt 32.93 points — nearly 4% — surpassing the previous single-day record and stunning Wall Street. Investors were celebrating Nixon's 90-day wage-price freeze, betting it would squeeze inflation without denting corporate profits. The structural consequence underneath — abandoning gold convertibility — would take years to arrive, a reminder that markets often applaud the headline and miss the history.
Markets cheered the policy they wanted to hear; the inflationary reckoning from ending gold convertibility came much later.
🇺🇸 US
Source: Hillsdale College; The New Republic
🌍 Around the World
Hong Kong Lists China Shares, But Beijing Still Takes Its Cut
Hong Kong levies no dividend withholding tax of its own — yet investors buying Chinese H-shares on the HKEX will find the PRC quietly withholding 10% at source before cash ever crosses the border. Red Chip companies incorporated offshore are generally exempt, though some voluntarily withhold 10% depending on structure. Foreigners accessing mainland A-shares via Stock Connect face the same flat 10% PRC withholding rate. The listing venue and the tax venue are not the same thing.
Always check the company's domicile and share class — not just where it trades — before counting your dividend.
🇨🇳 CN
Source: PwC China withholding tax summary; HKEX Stock Connect investor guide
🔥 Dividend Streak
ABM Industries Turns a $4.50 Mop into 58 Years of Raises
In 1909, Morris Rosenberg spent $4.50 on a bucket, mop, sponge, broom and brush — and earned his investment back plus $3.50 profit on his very first day of window-washing. That singular hustle grew into ABM Industries, now an $8.4 billion facility-services company and a bona fide Dividend King. Since 1968 the company has raised its dividend every consecutive year — one of the more quietly remarkable streaks in American corporate history.
From a single day's window-washing rounds in San Francisco to 58 straight years of dividend increases — ABM's story is something else.
ABM — ABM Industries Incorporated
Source: FundingUniverse; Wikipedia – ABM Industries
💡 Did You Know
An 1901 Court Captures Preferred Stock's Eternal Bargain in One Phrase
A Maryland court in 1901 grappled with stock promising its holder "a perpetual dividend of six per centum per annum and no more" — and in doing so crystallized the essential logic of preferred shares that still holds today. You receive your fixed payout reliably, ahead of common shareholders, and in perpetuity. But if the company thrives spectacularly, that "and no more" is the wall you cannot climb. Priority in exchange for a capped return — the legal framework, remarkably, hasn't changed since.
"A perpetual dividend… and no more" — five words written in 1901 that still define preferred stock's trade-off today.
US
Source: EBSCO; Maryland Court Records