After peaking in June 2022, search traffic for the term "inflation" appears to be dying down in 2023, albeit still very elevated from the last two decades.

Are you all noticing your weekly shopping (essentials like grocery et al) spiking?

A simple table that I found, but one that shows you can ignore much of the news and talking heads and just focus on your process and learning. This is partly why I stopped using my Twitter account, as I found there to be a disproportionate focus on the daily movement of stocks, despite everyone there claiming to be a longer-term investor.

This group seems to have a little more "head on their shoulders" so I prefer it here. While investing should be an inherently social activity, sometimes you just have to sit down at the desk, with a pile of PDFs, filings, and transcripts, and block out the outside influences of the devil-tongued media. You struggle to have independent thoughts if you are influenced by 100s of others on a daily basis.

Have a great weekend folks, and stay invested!

Amazon $AMZN begins the process of laying off over 10,000 corporate workers. Things are looking bad for Q4 layoffs.

Hoping these people have some way of getting by until next year.

I see many investors spending a considerable amount of time discussing the crypto market and the recent foibles of FTX and it's shady, soon-to-be jailbird, CEO. If it's not that, it's the minute details of Twitter's rule under Elon Musk.

Perhaps it's just the boomer in me, but if this doesn't pay you money, pay it no mind.

Time is scarce, and allocating the precious amount of it we have each day to noise like this will do you no good.

Have a great Thursday everyone!

Hello Commonstock, been a while since I posted, have been busy at work and earnings season. Some might remember at the beginning of 2022 I set a goal for myself to build a new dividend portfolio from scratch, and conclude the year with £350 in dividends received.

So far I have allocated over £12,000 into my ISA, which is handily exempt from taxes. There are still around 5 months left for me to max out my ISA allowance for the year, which I intend to do so. So far, with Q4 dividends still to go (the bulk of mine come in November and December) I have pulled in £330.45 in dividends, with a further £125 expected by the end of the year. I think it's safe to say the goal will be complete for Year 1 of this journey.

To make matters better, although it doesn't really matter, I am beating the S&P 500 this year.

Following up on my post last week about Peloton $PTON there appears to be more bad news flowing from the company after they announced they will be delaying the reporting of their annual filing (10-K). Peloton issued a statement yesterday claiming they "require additional time to permit completion of the accounting and disclosures".

The key part of the statement is that this “includ[es] management’s assessment of the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting as it relates to its accounts and disclosures related to these strategic business developments.”

Filing an NT 10-K doesn't always lead to catastrophe, but it is always a red flag in my book.

There is a lot of noise surrounding Peloton $PTON but it is important to note that whilst the bull case back in 2019 may have been compelling (albeit, flawed in hindsight), so much has changed since then.

What was once an exclusive, integrated, product with level-headed management has become nothing more than a team that got too far ahead of itself and didn't know how to reign it in. The management team handled the surplus of demand poorly, assuming it would continue and allocated capital in a way that aligned with that misunderstanding. Now, they are slashing costs and having to degrade the quality of their operating model to avoid bankruptcy. There is a myriad of other issues such as their fumbling on pricing and their lying to investors about solvency and the need to raise capital earlier this year.

But the final nail in the coffin (I believe) is that now Peloton is tearing down the thing that made them so unique in the first place; exclusivity. Now that Bikes and apparel will be sold on Amazon, I fear that Peloton will suffer the fate of Under Armour, a company that cheapened its once-premium brand image by focussing on volume above all else.

I tend not to touch fitness products/businesses, so have never been a shareholder of Peloton, but I have watched it closely. The important thing to note here is that we shouldn't simply extrapolate our beliefs based on the fact the share price has fallen so hard. The "stuff" in between is what matters, and in this case, Peloton is so far apart from the business it was 2-3 years ago, it's almost unrecognisable.

The credo of "be greedy when others are fearful" does not apply here. This quote, often misinterpreted, only holds true when the share price is behaving in a manner that is not related to the quality of the business or the fundamental picture. In this case, Peloton's share price has been thumped because both of those factors have degraded vsatly.

https://commonstock.com/post/e458d6c8-9025-4c41-8dbc-a18cfd03d231 by @fintwit

I don't own any $META but this is for all you Meta shareholders.

While the company is set to unveil their new upper-range VR device later this year, project Cambria, a device that blends AR and VR seamlessly, you have the competition, namely Playstation issuing press releases about their latest VR headset that is due to release next year, and it still has WIRES for Pete's sake.

Everyone invests for a different reason. Some enjoy the educational side of it, to have a broader understanding of the world. Others enjoy the process, some want to leave wealth to their family, and some wish to compound wealth (ideally we all will).

I enjoy the process, I love the joy that studying companies brings me. But one of my longer-term goals is to generate enough yield so that I can afford not to work anymore. Or at the very least, it will grant me the freedom to be picky with work.

What is your why, and what is one of your LT goals?

Ignoring the headlines I continue to invest in companies that demonstrate the following:

• Have rock-solid balance sheets

• Can continuously pay & increase their dividend payments

• Have suitable capital appreciation potential

• Will still be around in decades to come.

Now about halfway towards the £20,000 annual ISA limit for the year as I head into August, so time to ramp up the contributions. The best part is, that all dividends and capital returns are exempt from tax.