I would just say I think your aunt and I will agree on this.

Many more companies should be paying a dividend.

There are far more benefits even a small mid-cap company that might be in still the third

or fourth inning of its evolution.

A dividend can instill a lot of discipline on management.

If you think about it, if you have to pay out, say, 20 or 30 percent of your earnings every

year into, for your dividend, if you've promised that to shareholders, it's going to have an effect

on how you allocate capital.

I'm Mary Long and that's Matt Argersinger. He's a regular on Molly Full Money.

In his day job, Matt runs the Fool's dividend investor portfolio,

along with Anthony Chivone.

dividend investor is available to members of Epic and are Advanced Investing Services.

Mattier and Ant joined me to check in on the dividend payers and why they've had a rough few years

compared to the broader market, how dividends affect decisions in the C-suite, and if Nike can write

another comeback story.

So I want to start by checking in on the status of dividend

E. T. F. S. M. M. P. 500. year-to-date and also over the past five years.

So with that Intel up front, what's the long-term case for looking at dividend payers?

Well, thanks Mary, thanks for having us.

Yes, it's been a challenging five years for dividends.

I would say really, especially in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, you had this real strong

rotation in the market to large cap, but especially large cap tech companies.

...