Acknowledgments

As often in life, sometimes things seem to fall into place themselves. I studied International Business and Social Sciences at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. My favorite professor and instructor became Prof. Dr. Franca Ruhwedel. Without her, I would not have developed any meaningful interest in finance. But thanks to her personality and awfully good teaching style, finance became fun to me. When the time came to write my bachelor thesis, it was clear to me that I wanted her to be my supervisor for my thesis. As part of my thesis, I wanted to investigate the effect of dividends on value investments. Which blended my deep respect for Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger with – surprisingly – a real research challenge, as I didn’t find any meaningful research which looked into the effects of dividends specifically within the domain of value investing. I worked many early mornings and late afternoons in the finance lab of my university. Teaching myself from scratch, how to use Eikon and how to use Excel. Initially, I though writing a bachelor thesis would suck and was a necessary evil. But the opposite became true. This combination of a topic which truly interested me while being confronted to a real challenge – to find the answers to my research questions – made me for the first time experience a real flow state. I want to thank Prof. Dr. Franca Ruhwedel for being such a great tutor who made Finance – such an admittedly dry topic – interesting. Who supported and enabled not only me, but all her students to achieve their best. Without her, I would not have discovered the Value Dividend Strategy.