Questions to ask during tariff threats: How is the customer concentration?

Suppose you have found a company that sustains little impact from tariffs, survived the last recession relatively unscathed, has no debt, and pays a solid dividend and has a low payout ratio. Are you safe? Well maybe, but now you need to worry about other companies. In a recession, many companies experience sharp slowdowns. Some will not survive. If your “secure” company has 65 per cent of its business with another company, now you also need to worry about that other company. Companies with high levels of customer concentration are always riskier but in a recession that concentration risk becomes even more acute. Ideally, you want to own a company with no customer accounting for more than 10 per cent of its business.
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The DeepSeek threat is overblown; we're not seeing mass cancellation of orders at Nvidia, but even an increase--chips are sold out for the year. Alphabet just praised its relationship with NVDA. And yet, NVDA hasn't recovered from January's DeepSeek news. He trimmed his holding, but still owns a lot of shares. However, the White House has made NVDA a political football. Shares should not have fallen in the first place.

Know that anything can happen with any stock. But it's a matter of risk/reward and what scenario is more likely.

Not something his firm is all that predisposed to doing. One of the most dangerous phrases that gets tossed around in investing is "buy low, sell high". A better discipline is to "buy high, sell higher" -- that's the approach in their momentum mandate, and it works very well. Momentum is a force of nature not only in physics, but also in the investing world.

Considerations during tariff uncertainty: Does your company pay a dividend?

If so, what is the payout ratio? A dividend won’t always stop a stock from falling. Just look at BCE Inc. for confirmation of this. Its current yield is 13.4 per cent, but its stock is down 28 per cent in the past year. This, of course, is because investors fear it will cut its dividend. But for a stock paying a dividend that is not likely to be cut, the dividend can provide both a floor for a stock price, and ongoing income for investors who hold that stock throughout a recession. Secure dividends might lessen the pain of any continued market decline. When looking at stocks you own, take a look at their dividend history and, importantly, their payout ratio. A company that has paid dividends for 45 years and with a payout ratio of only 15 per cent is probably going to be secure. Note we said “secure” and not “safe,” as no dividend is guaranteed, ever.
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For the time being, Trump controls the stock market and only he can make it a good thing or not--and it's time to go all in on good.

Everyone brings up this word, but it's such a low probability. You can have slower growth, absolutely, with all the tariff rhetoric. But he doesn't think it's going to actually result in a recession. The situation is self-inflicted by Trump, and we've seen over the last couple of days how he can dial it back. He and his people are watching the market and they know how to rig it.