For several years, dividend investors have been forced to sit quietly in the corner while growth stocks turned the market into their private awards ceremony. Artificial intelligence dominated the conversation. Mega-cap technology companies attracted enormous amounts of capital. Investors happily paid elevated valuations for businesses promising faster growth, wider margins, and a future in which apparently every refrigerator, automobile, toothbrush, and spreadsheet would require an advanced semiconductor. Meanwhile, the companies producing medicine, beverages, industrial equipment, energy, insurance, and dependable cash distributions were treated like furniture. Useful, certainly, but not something anyone felt compelled to discuss at dinner. I understand why. A rising stock is more exciting than a quarterly dividend. Nobody gathers the family around the computer to watch Coca-Cola deposit another distribution. A dividend does not flash across the screen, announce a revolutionary produc...
There are stocks I buy because I believe the market is underestimating their growth. There are stocks I buy because the underlying assets appear to be worth more than the market price. Then there are stocks like Walmart, where I find myself staring at the valuation and asking a slightly different question: How much am I willing to pay to avoid unpleasant surprises? Walmart is not an obscure turnaround story hiding beneath a mountain of debt. It is not a speculative technology company promising to revolutionize commerce once it figures out how to generate a profit. It is one of the largest, most recognizable, and most durable retailers on the planet. Approximately 280 million customers and members visit Walmart’s stores and e-commerce platforms each week. The company operates more than 10,900 stores across 19 countries and generated roughly $713 billion in revenue during fiscal 2026. Walmart is not merely a retailer at this point. It is economic infrastructure with shopping carts. That ...