By almost any measure, the U.S. economy is in great shape. At 3.9%, the U.S. unemployment rate is at historic lows. Inflation remains at reasonably low levels and economic growth, as measured by GDP, just hit its highest quarterly rate since 2014. But economies have a nasty tendency to go through boom and bust cycles […]
News
The 2-Minute Thought: Physicists and Poets in Investing — Revisited
In a 2014 talk, MIT physicist and novelist Alan Lightman said that in childhood he loved both writing and science. He wrote dozens of poems exploring a wide range of subjects and experiences and was fascinated by how words could make you feel. He also scavenged for resistors, capacitors, wires, and test tubes so he […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Beware of Creep
Winner take all. Growth at any price. In this kind of environment, there are at least three temptations for value-minded investors. One is to give in and buy those high-priced, go-go momentum stocks that have frustrated you for so long. Another is the opposite — to fall into value traps. That is, in a high-priced […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Airlines
Airline stocks are underperforming this year. The big three U.S. carriers — Delta, United, and American – are up a market cap-weighted average of 1.4%, while the S&P 500 is up 5.3%. And that is after including Wednesday’s big 8.8% jump in United after it raised its profit forecast. United now stands out as the […]
Last of the Dow Originals…General Electric…
Professionals may follow the more statistically accurate Standard & Poor 500 to measure the stock market but the general public still stands with the Dow Jones Industrial Average. A railroad dominated Dow was created in 1884 but it soon gave way to an all Industrial Index of 12 stocks in 1896. The chart below shows […]
For Millennials the Struggle is Real…
When you were born may impact the success of your retirement savings more than you realize. Each of us follows a financial trajectory through life that is largely dependent on prevailing economic, political, demographic and social conditions. But does the generation we belong to possess different characteristics of work ethic and savings habits than other […]
Snow-capped Mountains, Salt, and Lithium…
There are a few things to know about landing in La Paz, Bolivia, as my family and I did recently. One is that La Paz is the highest capital in the world, so when you land at the airport at 13,300 feet above sea level, you feel it. Breathing is harder. The air is so […]
The Skinny on the Big, Fat Trade Dispute…
The current trade debate began back in January when the Trump administration, fed up with what it viewed as unfair trade practices, began threatening to levy tariffs against China. These threats became real in early July when U.S. slapped levies on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods. China responded by imposing tariffs on a similar […]
The 2-Minute Thought: How Big Can a Company Get?
A recent column in The Economist suggested that Apple is testing the natural limits of company size. It’s not a new idea. It seems natural to expect that something would happen eventually after a company gets so big and dominant – something like market saturation, competition, backlash, missteps, or product obsolescence. Every age has had its […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Mid-Year Market Review
The pink chart below from last Friday’s Financial Times tells us a lot about where we are in markets now: Source: Financial Times The indomitable FANG or FAANG stocks remain indomitable (that’s Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google – plus Amazon if you do the double A). Though there was a brief moment of doubt earlier in […]
The 2-Minute Thought: When to Heed Advice from Others
In her 2013 book, Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan, Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino describes an experiment she did with Don Moore, a colleague at the University of California, Berkeley. In the study, participants were shown pictures of people and asked to estimate their weight. […]
Some Things We Have Run Across Recently…
The demilitarized zone between North and South Korea has always interested me, not because of the military standoff but because of its ecological history and now, its economic development. The DMZ is not a fence or a Berlin Wall. It is an enormous swath of land, 528 square miles in size. Because there has been […]
