I teach a course at the University of Vermont through the Grossman School of Business titled Personal Finance and Investing. Few colleges have ever offered a course like this. People ask me, “What is this, how to balance a checkbook?” Hardly. Personal Finance is taught so infrequently because it is considered “trade school,” not sufficiently […]
News
Things Are Better Than We Think…
Ready for some good news before the Holidays? Here it is: The world is happier than you think, and things probably are not as bad as they seem. What do I mean? Take a look at the chart here from the excellent site Our World in Data. It compares how happy people are with how […]
If Some Is Good, More Must Be Better…
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are considered to be one of the investment world’s great inventions. When first launched back in 1993, ETFs represented an improvement over their earlier index mutual fund cousins largely because they allowed investors to trade throughout the day rather than accept only end of day prices. Unfortunately, Wall Street, ever on […]
The 2-Minute Thought: What I Learned from Writing a Novel in a Month
Forgive me for taking a slightly longer break from “The 2-Minute Thought” than expected. The reason was that I wrote a novel in the month of November – and then I needed to recuperate for a week. Yup, I wrote a novel in 30 days. It isn’t bestseller material, and it ain’t publishable or even […]
Life is Understood Backwards…But Lived Forwards…
We are Value investors which means we believe that successful long-term investing involves buying out of favor securities selling cheap relative to their earnings and assets. Stock prices are a function of many things – earnings, dividends and the level of interest rates – but equally important is human emotions. Ray DeVoe, a well known […]
So When Is The Next Big Drop Coming?…
Wow, talk about a question beyond my pay grade! But in this charged environment we have to ask. A lot of people are very anxious and nervous in this market. Since March 2009 it has been nothing but up for stock prices. This is the second longest uptrend in history. Only the 1987 – 2001 […]
High School Kids Aren’t What They Used To Be…
Move over baby boomers, Generation X and Millennials. All the fretting and worrying over you is done. The focus now is on Generation Z, or the “iGen.” These are kids and teens born between 1995 and 2012 who have never known life without the internet. They have Instagram accounts before they get into high school, […]
When Success Leads To Failure…
A handful of firms are having a larger and larger impact on the U.S. economy. Nowhere is this more evident than in the stock market where top tech titans Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google alone represent almost 15% of the S&P 500’s overall market capitalization. Market observers, and Value investors in particular, are scratching […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Welcome back to the 1930s?
Let’s face up to not being on the same trajectory that was laid out in the second half of the 20th century — the one of peace, prosperity, and stability. There were some extraordinary conditions then that helped to usher in decades of strong economic growth and that aren’t being repeated today. One, as discussed […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Postcard from Korea and China
After spending a week in South Korea, I can tell you that the threat from North Korea just isn’t top-of-mind for South Koreans. Not a single person I spoke to ever brought up North Korea or Kim Jong Un or military conflict in conversation. As you might have heard elsewhere, the geopolitical headlines that have […]
The 2-Minute Thought: A Changing Paradigm for Stock Valuation?
Could it be that the rules for valuing stocks have changed? That earnings and cash flow aren’t what determine a stock’s fundamental value? I don’t think so. But every value investor has to be wondering what in the wide world of investing is going on for value investing to be underperforming growth stocks for so […]
Playing the Long Game in China…
China is famous for taking the long view in both Economics and Politics. Zhou Enlai, the Premier under Mao Zedong, was once asked about the impact of the French Revolution, which occurred 200 years before his time. He famously replied, “it’s still too early to say.” China has been a difficult place for Western business. […]
