Regardless of where you stand politically I think we can all agree that things in Washington are pretty weird. The premise of Democracy is that anyone can be elected, and we proved this in spades last November. And now comes another curve ball. I know I am the only one in the room who doesn’t […]
Eric Hanson
This Is What Makes Our Business So Interesting…And Also So Difficult…
It was Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian-born American economist, who spoke of “creative destruction,” the dynamic, change-oriented and innovation-based tendency of Capitalism. The market is constantly replacing old ways of doing things with new ways. New mouse traps are constantly being devised. All this makes for a very interesting and frustrating investment business, trying to figure […]
Only When The Tide Goes Out Do You Discover Who Is Swimming Naked…
Warren Buffet likes this line. For him it means it is easy to make money in a Bull market, the hard part is buying things which will survive Bear Markets. The same thing goes for natural disasters. Who was prepared and protected when bad things happened to good people in Hurricanes Harvey and Irma? The […]
Is It Just Drip, Drip, Dripping Away?…
We are talking here about U.S. competitiveness and economic might. In the 1800’s we wrestled economic power away from Britain. We begged, borrowed and stole their technology and trade secrets and this allowed us to take over the top slot. Now we have a new competitor – China. They are trying to do the same […]
Not on Everyone’s Bucket List …But Still…
I recently returned from the South Caucasus: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Why the trip? I had visited Central Asia earlier and the South Caucasus is the next region to the East. The three states of the South Caucasus were former Soviet Republics. They gained independence in 1991. All three countries are blessed and cursed; blessed […]
We’re Talking the Smiley Face Economy Here…
President Trump is intent on bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. He is convinced that “making things” is the Holy Grail to making America Great Again. It is true manufacturing has declined as a percentage of the economy. Back 50 years ago a quarter of America’s production was manufacturing. Today it is 12%. But […]
Following Up on Odds and Ends…
You might remember back in December we wrote about some common cuckoos who spend the Spring and early Summer in the wetlands near Beijing, China and then migrate South. No one knew exactly where these cuckoos went so scientists fitted five birds with micro solar tags connected to satellites. Two of the birds were lost […]
The Robots Are Everywhere…
After the November election President Trump pressured a number of companies to either keep their existing U.S. factories open or to bring jobs back to the U.S. The companies that complied often did so with a big caveat, that they would substitute robots for many of their employees in order to keep expenses down. Conventional […]
Amazon at $1,000…What A Trip…
Amazon is the steamroller of today’s economy. When it enters a new sector – watch out – competitors may not be there tomorrow. Amazon went public 20 years ago and already the stock is up to over $1,000 a share. A $10,000 investment in Amazon 20 years ago is worth nearly $5 million today. Many […]
The Science of Football…and Also Investing?…
Back in March 2008 we wrote a piece about football (only we Americans call it soccer). Football matches are low scoring affairs often decided by just one goal. When a penalty kick is awarded, the Goalkeeper is just 36 feet away from the shot taker and has all of 0.2 to 0.3 seconds to react. […]
Whistling Past the Grave Yard?…
We don’t usually discuss technical analysis. We are fundamental analysts with a long time horizon. We practice Value investing, looking for companies whose shares are trading cheap relative to earnings and assets. Technical analysts argue that everything that you need to know about future stock prices is embedded in past prices and volume. But two […]
We Are All Optimists on This Bus…
As you can see from the chart below Wall Street is a pretty optimistic place. The lines show what analysts were estimating for corporate profits at the beginning of each year versus how they turned out. Over thirty years of tracking these numbers only twice have the S&P 500 companies delivered earnings higher than first […]
