📅 On This Day
Dow Plunges 530 Points as China Fears and Oil Collapse Converge
On August 21, 2015, the Dow fell 530 points — 3.1% — to close at 16,459.75, capping what was then the worst week for U.S. markets in four years. China's crashing stock market, a rattled yuan, and oil sliding below $40 a barrel made the selling indiscriminate: dividend-paying utilities and consumer staples fell alongside growth stocks. Few knew it then, but the following Monday would open with the Dow down more than 1,000 points — Friday's close was the moment the market stopped pretending it was a bad week.
Even the steadiest dividend payers offered no shelter as panic swept through every corner of the market.
🇺🇸 US
Source: PBS; The Wall Street Journal
🌍 Around the World
Norway's Dividend Tax Reaches ~38%, Sending Billionaires to Switzerland
Norway's statutory dividend tax sits at 22%, but an 'adjustment factor' applied to the taxable amount changes everything. When the government raised that factor to 1.72 in October 2022, the effective rate reached roughly 37.8% — and combined with a wealth tax on unrealized share values, around 80 wealthy Norwegians relocated to Switzerland, taking an estimated NOK 46 billion in assets with them. For dividend investors, it stands as a vivid modern lesson in how quickly compounding math can be undone by a single policy change.
Norway is the clearest recent example of how tax mechanics, not just rates, determine whether dividends are worth collecting.
🇳🇴 NO
Source: Norwegian Tax Administration (Skatteetaten); Fortune (April 2024); Tax Foundation Europe
🔥 Dividend Streak
Kodak Built the Digital Camera, Then Watched It Destroy the Dividend
Eastman Kodak, founded in 1888, paid dividends for more than a century and ranked among the ten largest S&P 500 companies as recently as the 1980s. A Kodak engineer built the first digital camera in 1975, but the company chose to protect its film franchise rather than embrace what it had invented — and as digital photography took hold, the cash engine behind the dividend collapsed. The payout was cut in 2003, suspended entirely on April 30, 2009, and Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
A century of unbroken payments proved no match for the disruption Kodak itself had quietly set in motion.
KODK — Eastman Kodak Co
🇺🇸 US
Source: Eastman Kodak SEC filing (8-K, April 30, 2009); Seeking Alpha
💡 Did You Know
Only About 27 U.S. Companies Have Paid Dividends for a Full Century
By one commonly cited screen, roughly 27 out of more than 6,000 U.S.-listed stocks have paid dividends continuously for a century or more — around 0.4% of the entire market. Names like York Water (paying since 1816), Stanley Black & Decker (since 1877), and Procter & Gamble (since 1890) populate this rare club, alongside several Canadian banks with records stretching back 160 years or more. Earning a place here means surviving depressions, world wars, technological upheaval, and the enduring temptation to cut when earnings disappoint.
A 100-year dividend record isn't a streak — it's a biography of resilience written one quarterly payment at a time.
🇺🇸 US
Source: Sure Dividend; company investor relations filings