I'm going to defend dividends some. If a company pays a dividend, it isn't engaging in Arthur Anderson/Enron/GE type accounting. You can't fake a dividend - you have to bona fide earn money and be profitable (well, in the long term) to make this work. Companies that have paid them for decades - some longer than even my long-departed grandpa had been alive (he held PG, which was my first stock, and PG has even *grown* its dividend longer than I have been alive) tend to be less prone to chaos, fads, whatever r/wallstreetbets is probably foolishly doing this week, and flim-flam of other flavors.

We know Berkshire is of high quality, despite no dividend. What about some other mega cap? Do we feel confident about, say, Tesla or NVDIA's balance sheet and earnings reporting and transparency and long running history?