Gallup has been asking people for decades if they approve or disapprove of the leadership of the U.S. and other nations around the world. Always take surveys with a grain of salt, but the results for 2018 must be saying something (Gallup, “Rating World Leaders: 2018”). Among the interesting findings: Around the world, approval of […]
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The 2-Minute Thought: The Final Four of Investment Rules
At the end of 2014, Morgan Housel wrote out his 16 investment rules to live by for an article in The Wall Street Journal. And while Housel didn’t write the article during the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, I somehow always associate it with the “Sweet Sixteen” and think about it in March. There are […]
Demographics are Destiny…
Well not exactly, but there is truth in this. It takes a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman to hold a country’s population steady. The U.S. had been at this number but recently has fallen back (see chart below). The number of children American women hope to have and what they achieve is drifting […]
All That Is In Peril Is Not Lost…
Well maybe, but you might not want to be too complacent. China is the world leader in many areas today (manufacturing, exports, solar panels, etc.) and catching up fast in others, like technology. Chinese startups have come to Silicon Valley for years to see how things are done. Now they are wondering if there is […]
How Money Makes Us Feel…
Financial writer Morgan Housel once contrasted the financial lives of two very different people: One was Grace Groner, who was born in rural Illinois in 1909, started working as a secretary during the Great Depression, bought used clothing and never owned a car. The other was Richard Fuscone, who attended Dartmouth, got an MBA from […]
What To Do With All That Cash…
The Tax Reform Act passed last December was good news for Corporate America. Tax rates on profits earned at home dropped from 35% to 21% and levies on lower taxed foreign earnings were significantly reduced. But the biggest near-term positive impact may come from the provision that reduced taxes on cash balances held abroad to […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Investing Is a Social Exercise
In one of his great papers on the ten attributes of great investors, Michael Mauboussin writes that “investing is an inherently social exercise” (“Thirty Years: Reflections on the Ten Attributes of Great Investors, Michael J. Mauboussin, Dan Callahan, Darius Majd, Credit Suisse, August 4, 2016). That’s both fact and warning. The fact is that investing […]
The 2-Minute Thought: A Censored Market Commentary
To understand the following passage, please see the numbered guide to the missing words below: Few would 1 that the behavior of financial markets sometimes defies common sense. There are downright absurd stories like Long Island Iced Tea seeing its stock soar nearly 300% in December after a 2 move to change its name to “Long […]
A Wall Street Update: Back to Reality…
Ernest Hemingway once said about bankruptcy, it happens “gradually and then suddenly.” Well on Wall Street we got a rude awakening recently as we moved from little or no volatility last year to multi-day triple digit declines. We were lulled into complacency in 2018 with a gently rising market. Now it’s back to reality. Over […]
“How To Invest In An Overpriced World”…
My apologies to The Wall Street Journal for stealing their headline from an article by Burton Malkiel on how to best position yourself in today’s uncertain times. Malkiel is important to listen to since he is the author of the all-time Investment classic, A Random Walk Down Wall Street. With the market increase in 2018, […]
Making Sense of GE…
What in the world is going on with General Electric? Once one of the world’s most revered companies known for producing managers par excellence, now it looks like a disaster. The Lex column in the Financial Times just called GE “a rolling train wreck of unexpected and expensive blunders.” Its stock is off 40% the […]
What Japan And The Olympics Can Teach Us…
The U.S. economy continued to gain steam last year, increasing at a 2.5% inflation-adjusted rate. Exports grew nicely thanks to the dollar’s 7% decline, and on the consumer front, low unemployment and a buoyant stock market helped boost spending levels. Keeping our economic engine humming at this rate, however, will not be easy. In order […]
