Last week, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or “Calpers,” said it is considering investing in tobacco stocks again. If it decides to do so, it will be a noteworthy reversal. As the U.S.’ largest pension fund, Calpers’ actions carry weight. Calpers divested from tobacco in 2000, but not for the social responsibility reasons some […]
News & Insights
The 2-Minute Thought: The Stories We Tell About Manufacturing
There are all kinds of narratives about manufacturing. The old narrative from pre-financial crisis days was that globalization was taking manufacturing away from developed economies and giving it to emerging markets that had cheap labor. The 2000s were all about the hollowing out of textile mills in the U.S. while China became manufacturer to the […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Stocks We Chose Not To Buy
We choose not to buy many of the stocks we look at. In fact, we pass on most. Nevertheless, we learn a lot from looking at all of them – and then looking back at them again after we’ve said “no.” As value investors, we look for stocks selling for less than we think they’re […]
Everything Should Be as Simple as it Can Be, But No Simpler… (Attributed to Albert Einstein)
Pundits in January feared that the global economy had reached “stall speed.” Central Banks had done as much as they could to prop things up. At some point the world might turn in on itself for a major Recession. Things look a lot brighter today. But what about the long term outlook for the U.S.? […]
Make America Great Again?
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 […]
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 […]
