It's Tuesday, April 14th.

Welcome to Marker Toolery.

I'm Chris Hill.

With me is Bill Barker.

Good to see you.

Yes, good to see you.

I mean, we're seeing each other through Zoom, but that's better than nothing.

It's better than nothing, absolutely. We've got oil stocks, we've got entertainment,

but we're going to start with J&J. Johnson and Johnson,

first quarter profits and revenue came in higher than expected. They also raised

their quarterly dividend, which is nice to see in an environment when more and more companies are cutting their dividend and shares of Johnson and Johnson were up around 5% this morning.

Yeah, they buck in the trend with the raised dividend.

I think that's mostly muscle memory there that, you know, they raised the dividend periodically and this was the scheduled time to raise it and

the most interesting thing perhaps other than just how good the quarter generally was

was that they actually

came out with some guidance rather than just eliminate it. They lowered guidance

certainly for the rest of the year, but they didn't step all the way

out of the business, which most places are doing.

Yeah, and I'm wondering, you know, and this is unknowable, but I'm wondering how much of the the rise in Johnson and

Johnson stock that we're seeing today is because of that combination the

combination of raising the dividend and yes as as you said, there's a muscle memory aspect to it, but also the, I have to believe there are at least a few investors out there who are just looking at Johnson and Johnson looking at the

quarter and even with the pulling back of guidance a little bit there's just you know

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