Investors may be more focused on stocks with high free cash flow and shareholders-friendly capital return programs in a struggling market. As we said last FridayCompanies with strong balance sheets and steady share repurchase programs, as well as healthy dividend payments and balanced cash flow, are more likely to be able to withstand volatile markets and provide support. The case is largely in our favor. AppleThe stock’s remarkable outperformance was due to the fact that a $20 billion stock purchase by GE in the last quarter of reporting was made.

Our portfolio includes many companies that routinely buy stock, increase dividends year after year and repurchase it. This is something we seek out in all of our investments. We have highlighted the names of three people who announced improved capital returns programs in just the last week.

Even today’s ugly tapes, NucorAfter the announcement Thursday night of a 23% increase in its quarterly cash dividend, shares have risen. This was the 49th consecutive year Nucor had increased its base or regular dividend. The updated Nucor annual dividend payment now stands at $2 per share. This puts the yield at 1.8%. Nucor announced that the Board has approved a repurchase plan of as much as $4 billion in addition to the dividend payment. New authorization replaces $3 billion program that was previously approved. Under this program, $2.33 trillion of stock were repurchased in May to Dec.

Nucor isn’t the only Charitable Trust company that announced this week new repurchase plans. MastercardThe company increased its dividend 11%, and it announced Tuesday a new share purchase program up to $8 billion. This news was not well received by the market. Although concerns over the cross-border disruption of the omicron Covid gene have taken precedence, we doubt that the company will plan to purchase all the stock in question if it didn’t consider the weakness a long-term opportunity to invest.

The Charitable Trust’s latest initiation took place on Wednesday ChevronIt has raised its share buyback guidance to $3B to $5B per annum from previous guidance that was $2B to $3B per annum. It’s hard to say that we were surprised at this announcement. In our initiation postAs we said, it would only take a few more years before management increases its buyback activities. Chevron’s emphasis on capital and cost control means that most of the cash generated by the company will be returned via buybacks and dividends to shareholders. You can’t miss that 4.67% dividend yield, which investors have a lot of recourse to if the market is volatile.

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Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust has AAPL and NUE as well as MA, MA, and CVX.