Franklin Templeton’s income looks dependable. The harder question is whether the business underneath it is finally turning a corner. I have a weakness for dividend stocks. There is something deeply satisfying about owning a company that sends me cash without requiring me to sell anything, predict the next market craze, or pretend I understand why a cryptocurrency named after a cartoon animal gained 40% before breakfast. But a dividend can be seductive in exactly the wrong way. A large yield can look like a welcome mat when it is actually caution tape. It can make a struggling company appear generous when the market is quietly pricing in stagnant earnings, weak growth, or a future cut. A dividend tells me what management intends to pay. The stock price tells me what investors think that promise is worth. That brings me to Franklin Templeton, which still trades under the ticker BEN following the company’s August 2026 corporate name change from Franklin Resources. At a recent price near $...
For years, Microsoft trained investors to think of cloud computing as one of capitalism’s more elegant machines. Build the platform, fill the data centers, sell recurring access, and watch software economics spread across an enormous customer base. It was not effortless, but it looked wonderfully scalable. Each additional workload could ride on infrastructure Microsoft had already built, while subscription revenue arrived with the dependable rhythm of a direct debit nobody in accounting wanted to cancel. Then artificial intelligence showed up carrying a shopping list. The list included graphics processors, central processing units, custom silicon, networking equipment, cooling systems, power contracts, land, concrete, backup generators, fiber, and data centers large enough to make an airport terminal feel intimate. Suddenly, the cloud business that investors loved for its software-like margins began consuming capital with the appetite of a heavy industrial project. I do not view this a...