While potentially producing the rare useful nugget, a very few posters (two, to be exact) easily go in my "Does not merit my time and attention" box, sort of the equivalent to Warren and Charlie's quick-filter "Too Hard" box.

It is one thing to spend time discussing all the pluses and minuses of how to arrange the deck chairs on the titanic.

It is another thing to spend time professing explicitly how your time is best not spent on discussions of the desk chair questions, while implicitly showing how you think discussions of how your time is actually best spent by discussing how your time is best spent.

Ultimately, we are all spending our time in a relatively pleasant past-time, discussing our first-world problems with other people who have first-world problems and the time and inclination to discuss them.

Does HC have a point that a lot of very smart very successful companies issue small dividends regularly, and there is probably a reason for this which is not brain dead? Almsot certainly yes.

Does Mungofitch have a point that using relatively reasonable models of pricing and valuation, you can actually show that a company which tosses 1% of its Market Cap over the transom each year will likely show signs of having 1% less of its Market Cap to invest in its growth each year? Again, almost without a doubt.

Indeed HC even has a point that Buffett himself is not as doctrinaire as his most zealous acolytes on this board. While the zealots declare in no uncertain terms that dividends are just wrong, Buffett has happily owned gigantic core positions paying dividends. Buffett has NEVER had a problem deciding that hundreds of billions of his magnum opus should be dedicated to dividend paying stocks.

My vote: let the duels and the circular firing squads continue, AT LEAST until morale is improved.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

R:)