My Honest Answer After the Dividend ETF Became a Financial Personality Type There was a time when owning a dividend ETF was a quiet decision. You bought a basket of profitable companies, collected the distributions, reinvested them, and went about your life. Nobody made it their entire identity. Nobody posted quarterly dividend screenshots as though Coca-Cola had personally mailed them a handwritten thank-you note. Nobody entered online arguments prepared to defend an exchange-traded fund with the emotional intensity normally reserved for family honor. Then SCHD happened. The Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF has become more than a fund in certain corners of the internet. It is a philosophy, a retirement plan, a community, a security blanket, and occasionally a substitute for having a personality. Mention that growth stocks have outperformed during a particular stretch, and somebody will appear from behind a spreadsheet to announce that they prefer “getting paid to wait.” Mention that di...
For years, Walmart’s relationship with e-commerce reminded me of a very large man trying to squeeze himself into a very small sports car. I respected the effort. I admired the determination. I also wondered whether someone was eventually going to remove a door. Walmart understood that online shopping mattered. The company invested billions of dollars, bought technology businesses, built fulfillment capabilities, redesigned its website, expanded pickup, launched delivery services, introduced Walmart+, added third-party sellers, and generally did everything short of sending an executive to my house to place the order personally. Still, the basic problem remained: Amazon had spent decades teaching consumers to begin almost every product search inside Amazon’s ecosystem. Walmart had stores, trucks, groceries, enormous purchasing power, and enough physical real estate to qualify as a minor geographical feature. Amazon had the digital habit. Habits are difficult to break. Then something chan...