What’s all this about “again”? We certainly have our problems but the U.S. is still an incredible engine. As the old saying goes, “In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.” We are qualified to be the one-eyed man today, having recovered more impressively than almost any other country from the Great […]
News & Insights
What Does It Take To Get Ahead?
Meet YY Lam, rock star (pictured). Okay, he’s not really a rock star, but he kind of looks like one. He’s got the hair, the $190,000 sports car and lots of adoring fans. What Mr. Yat-yan Lam really does is teach Chinese language at one of Hong Kong’s biggest private after-school tutoring institutes called Beacon. […]
“Nothing Fixes Low Prices Like Low Prices…”
I just returned from the annual OGIS conference in New York where a wide range of U.S. based oil and gas companies presented to the investing public. The event is always an excellent way to gauge the health of the industry and this year proved no exception. A year ago, the upbeat presentations featured colorful […]
The 2-Minute Thought: The Year You Were Born Matters to Your Wealth
Source: Ray Boshara, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, “The Future of Building Wealth: Can Financial Capability Overcome Demographic Destiny?” When it comes to building wealth, personal ability matters — but so does luck. That’s something Warren Buffett always has acknowledged in his quips about winning “the ovarian lottery” — his way of saying he […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Hard Times for Korea’s Young and Old
Bloomberg South Korea’s population is aging rapidly. In 1980, in the midst of the “Asian miracle,” the average age in Korea was 26. Now it is 40. Low birth rates and long average life expectancies mean that by 2040, a third of the population will be over 65. That’s a lot of senior citizens to […]
The 2-Minute Thought: When the Wisdom of Crowds Doesn’t Work
The wisdom of crowds is the idea that the judgment of a large group of people can be better than that of any individual. If you ask a large enough group of people to guess how many jelly beans are in a jar, the average answer will be remarkably accurate and better than most […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Stock Market Valuation –Where Are We?
Had you blinked year to date and just opened your eyes, you could think that stocks moved very little in 2016– U.S. stocks are almost even with where they started the year. But that would be glossing over the worst-ever start to the year for U.S. stocks and weeks of blind panic around the world. […]
The 2-Minute Thought: In Defense of Optimism
Investors need to be optimists. They need to believe that change is possible and that change is sometimes for the better. Without optimism, taking risk would be impossible. But in investment and life, it is easy for pessimism to prevail. For one thing, pessimism can sound a lot smarter than optimism. Morgan Housel muses about […]
Entrepreneurship & Creativity
Thomas Friedman the columnist in the New York Times is always excellent. In a February piece he noted that if given a blank sheet of paper and told to write down America’s three greatest sources of strength, he would include, “A culture of entrepreneurship”, “An ethic of pluralism” and “The quality of our governing institutions”. […]
The Lessons We Have To Learn…And Learn … And Learn Again
You don’t need me to tell you the stock market has been on quite a roller coaster earlier this year. In the first twelve days of 2016 the Dow Jones lost over 10%. This is the worst decline to start a year since 1897. We have said before and I am sure we will say […]
Reasons for Optimism
There are two interlinked stories here. One is about the rise of economic dynamism in smaller U.S. cities like Duluth, Sioux Falls, and Akron. The other is about the fall of globalization. Perhaps calling it “the fall of globalization” is a little dramatic, but global trade in goods is definitely down. Growth in the global […]
The Unanticipated Impact of Low Oil Prices
Most of us are well aware of oil’s recent, precipitous decline. Happily, prices at the gas pump are now below $2/gallon, home heating bills this winter have been less painful and airlines, in a show of generosity, are once again handing out free pretzels. The negative impact of lost energy sector jobs and profits are […]
