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Why Do People Insist On Making Investing So Hard?

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Table of Contents

• Why Do People Insist On Making Investing So Hard?

• Three Things To Know Before We Go…

• And one more thing… Did You Listen?

• Poll Results… Will Philip Morris (PM) Outperform T …

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Investors around the world should celebrate on May 8.

On that day in 1886, John Pemberton poured the very first Coke at Jacobs’ Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia. It cost 5¢.

And so began one of the greatest aggregations of wealth in human history.

Coke’s hyper-growth phase followed the introduction of its uniquely shaped bottle in 1915. A group of investors purchased the company for $25 million in 1919 and subsequently sold 400,000 shares to the public at $40 each. Coke’s business was so well known and appreciated by investors that upon its New York Stock Exchange listing (September 5, 1919), the brokers assigned it the symbol KO. The company was a knockout.

There has never been a more powerful consumer brand or product that is more beloved. Coke’s advertising in the 1930s, featuring Haddon Sundblom’s paintings of Santa, is responsible for most of the world’s Santa iconography.

Coke is the second most universally recognized word in the entire world, second only to OK.

Coke’s balance sheet today shows total assets of around $100 billion and total liabilities of around $75 billion, meaning that it rests on $25 billion worth of equity. And on that equity, Coke earns an incredible $15 billion, before taxes, interest expenses, etc. After these costs, it’s producing more than a 40% return on equity, year after year.

Those results produce stupendous amounts of wealth over time.