We’re still unravelling COVID’s effects on global and national populations, but so far, this is what we’re seeing: Higher deaths as measured by “excess mortality” around the world; lower migration between countries; out-migration from big cities to smaller ones or suburbs, at least in the U.S.; and perhaps most fascinating of all, a baby drought. […]
Julie Won
Once A Bell Is Rung, It Can’t Be Unrung…
Richard Heuer, a CIA veteran of 45 years, wrote that “once information rings a bell, the bell cannot be unrung.” What he meant was that once we learn something, it leaves an impression that is hard to erase — even after we find out the idea is false and discredited. It is an innate feature […]
How We Invest, How We Stay Grounded…
“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run,” scientist Roy Amara once said. It’s a wonderful way of remembering how we get caught up in hype but are short-sighted on long-term value. It also touches on why it can be so hard […]
The People Behind the Production…
Once in a while, we like to pull back the curtain and show you all that goes on behind the scenes at Hanson & Doremus. There is no wizard or wizardry behind the production, just a lot of old-fashioned work done by people that we think form quite a unique team. This is our 26th […]
Why it’s Been so Hard…
The investing phenomenon of the year has been how much, how quickly and how eagerly investors have bid up almost all asset prices, even as we’ve remained in one of the worst economic and health crises in history. Stocks, junk bonds, gold, houses – there’s been tremendous appetite for all. Competition for the brightest ideas […]
Threats Are Everywhere…
It’s been said that everyone’s social security number probably has been compromised and is somewhere out there on the dark web. While we can’t know for sure, more than one security expert has said it’s a safe assumption that your identity data has been stolen at least once and more likely, multiple times. In other […]
Finding Your Way While Bewildered…
“Investing is simple, but not easy,” goes the famous Warren Buffett quote – a lovely, concise way of stating an old truth. But not much these days seems simple or easy. In investing and the world at large, enduring beliefs have been getting tested. Eric wrote on page 2 about why the stock market could […]
Sadder Than Ever…
On Sunday, May 31, as the protests around George Floyd and civil unrest took hold, we had our saddest day ever according to something called the Twitter Hedonometer, an index that has been measuring our daily “happiness” since 2008. Developed by UVM researchers, the Hedonometer looks at a large random sample of English language tweets […]
What Comes Next?…
It’s been a strange, sad time for the world — and yet, also a period of radical adaptation, learning, reflection and reassessment. That’s not all bad. Historically, pandemics have led to big breaks from the past, and that’s what we seem to be experiencing now. Everything we thought we knew is being questioned. Widespread assumptions, […]
It’s a Slippery Slope…
One of the most fascinating things I read this week was an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Douglas Hodge, once CEO of investment giant PIMCO – and one of the dozens of parents who got arrested in last year’s college admission cheating scandal. Hodge paid $850,000 to get four of his children into […]
Why Your Cell Phone Plan Is So Expensive…
In the introduction to his new book, The Great Reversal, economist Thomas Philippon tells a wonderful story about landing in Boston in 1999 as a native of France, eager to start his Ph.D. program in economics at MIT. After finding a place to live and taking care of the basics, he goes to buy a […]
The Stories We Tell…
In 1985 Brad E. Bell and Elizabeth F. Loftus did a controlled experiment to find out how subjects playing the role of jury members responded to different presentations of the same evidence. The result was that vivid narratives full of colorful detail were far more effective than bland presentations of fact. In one example, they […]
