In a 2017 editorial, David Epstein and Malcolm Gladwell noted that most scientists have about the same number of hobbies as the general public, but that scientists inducted into national academies tend to have more – and Nobel Prize winners still more. Nobel laureates are at least 22 times more likely than others to have […]
News
When ‘Cash- Strapped’ Takes on New Meaning…
When you think ‘siege’ you think of the Middle Ages and months of castles surrounded and stalemated armies. Sieges don’t happen in the modern era. Well a siege actually did happen in Sarajevo (Bosnia) between 1992 and 1995. The Serbs completely surrounded the city and pounded Sarajevo daily with bombs and sniper fire from the […]
“Once A Year Go Somewhere You Have Never Been Before” – The Dalai Lama
I am the kind of person who needs to go to a place and see it, then I can better understand the history and current events. In the recent past I have been to Iran, the five ‘Stans, the South Caucasus and this summer, the Balkans. All of them are now a little more understandable. […]
Our Limitations… Our Habits…
Not too long ago, The Economist wrote an article about an academic paper that I’ve since learned is called “Evidence for a conserved quantity in human mobility” by Laura Alessandretti and Andrea Baronchelli, both in the Mathematics Department at City University of London, and Sune Lehmann at the DTU Technical University of Denmark. If you […]
When Will The Party End?…
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 […]
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 […]
