News

In a recent issue, The Economist predicted that by the mid-2030s, solar cells will represent the single greatest source of energy for electrical generation globally. To get a sense of just how big a claim this is, consider that today coal, at 36%, is the largest source and solar stands at just 6%. While the […]

In an earlier edition of the newsletter, we reported on a study done by the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research. They found that the age at which financial mistakes are minimized is on average age 53 or 54. This means we stumble through a lot of financial errors from high school to […]

It’s been more than four years since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. Covid is still very much with us — in fact, there’s a surge in infections now, as there has been every summer since 2020. But we’ve come a long way from the dark pre-vaccine days […]

Every country has culinary specialties influenced by other places as food cultures eventually meld together. Rarely does it become political. In the U.S., we’ve got hamburgers (who knows where they came from). In the U.K., it’s curries and chicken tikka masala. In the Netherlands, they have rijsttafel (inspired by the Indonesian “rice table”). In Germany, […]

ChatGPT, when first released back in late 2022, made a splash. AI technologies, and more specifically the large language models (LLMs) they are based on, had been around for years. But this AI chatbot was one of the first easy-to-use products capable of generating a range of written content in response to prompts – and […]

Those aren’t my words. I heard them from Shuntaro Takeuchi, a portfolio manager at Matthews Asia, and he wasn’t referring to the 1980 pop song by the Vapors, but to how aging around the globe is making the rest of the developed world look more like Japan. With 30% of its population over 65, Japan […]

In 1831, 26-year-old Alexis de Tocqueville spent ten months in America and Canada. Returning to France, he wrote Democracy in America (1835-1840), a book of observations about America and what aristocratic Europe might learn from it. Tocqueville admired the stability of the American economy, the popularity of churches, and how the spirit of religion and […]

Our lives over the last 20 years have moved increasingly online as everything from newspapers to banking have gone digital. Every year more people make all of their daily purchases via credit cards. Fewer than 14% of Americans in 2022 made all or almost all their purchases in a typical week with cash versus 41% […]

No – nobody is dumb here. We are just trying to simplify the complex U.S. economy. Real economic growth (growth after taking out inflation) is what drives hiring and corporate profits, allows for wage increases, and spurs the stock market. It’s important. So an obvious question is, what drives economic growth? It is a function […]

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, the world’s largest contract maker of semiconductors, has long exercised world domination in the manufacture of leading-edge chips from the small island of Taiwan. Only in recent years — as geopolitical rivalry has intensified — has TSMC started venturing beyond Taiwan and its two lesser facilities in mainland China. […]

In last month’s issue, we examined the concept of economic “moats” and how we use them to help identify and value potential portfolio investments. While the term is not new, its popularity has grown over the years. Investors’ love affair with companies possessing wide moats, or durable competitive advantages, comes as no surprise given results […]

Over the last month, universities and colleges across the U.S. bid farewell to the Class of 2024. Much has been written about their character, but an underappreciated observation might be this: the Class of 2024 has proven its adaptability and resilience. With the advent of COVID-19 and related lockdowns, members of the Class of 2024 […]