I bought BHP shares when I was just in school from P/T jobs. I...

I bought BHP shares when I was just in school from P/T jobs. I went to AGM (called school I was "sick") and spoke to Charles Goodyear (he was the CEO back than). Apart from ate all the food at AGM (to get my money worth), I spoke extensively to Charles Goodyear (the CEO). He was impressed with my young age.

He (Mr Goodyear) said to oldies (after the meeting) "if you want dividends, you should sell your BHP shares and look for banks or Telstra." Oldies complained lack of dividends from BHP.

He said (I learn that lesson from him) to me at lunch "commodity prices are cyclical, BHP is a conservative company." He ran the company so well.

MCR is a single commodity company. This cyclical nature is very damaging for MCR. It needs to hold larger cash reserve instead of paying dividends. FMG is also a single commodity company. It needs to hold cash not paying dividends with large debt still due in.

Now with new BHP board, they aggressively expanded and acquired so many projects at top of commodity cycle (eg shale oil, iron ore expansion to drive prices down).... look at poor BHP now. I sold out at top.

Rio did the same thing too... Riverdale mining and Alcan ($38B) acquisitions.