Christmas at Costco
It was the Saturday before Christmas, just before store opening when I pulled my SUV into the Costco parking lot, selected a parking place that would offer minimal chances of door dings, took one last swig of Starbucks® and headed into the store’s vestibule. It was ten minutes before opening, and while most waited in […]
Labor Day – Valuing Those Who Work and the Quiet Dignity of Work Itself
I was traveling through southern Minnesota. It was 2:30pm and it had already been a long day. Some days are like that, just a little more taxing than others. The clients and the client meetings had been fine, but the outside world seemed to be crumbling while I drove. Half a world away, Afghanistan was falling to the Taliban, […]
What Capitalism Does
We’re halfway through 2021, and it’s safe to assume most investors are pleased with the performance of their accounts. Financial markets behaved well the first six months of the year and especially favored larger dividend paying stocks. Fine by me as I favor them as well. So, why have financial markets favored larger dividend paying […]
Our Post-COVID Economy
So, what have we won? What have we gained with our lockdowns, breakthroughs in vaccines, loss of life, the distances kept from friends and family? I hope a better world, but I’ll settle for a safer today. Safer than this time last year, maybe not as safe as this time two years ago. So, the world starts again. For myself, […]
The Failure In Our Public Utilities
Wildfires throughout California last year bedeviled that state’s utility companies. Unable to adapt their power grids, utilities forced upon their customers brown-outs and shut downs of the sort usually reserved for third-world countries. Fires caused by under-maintained systems resulted in deaths and massive loss of property. Some folks made political hay from California’s woes. After-all, […]
What of a Biden Presidency?
Let’s talk about presidents, but let’s not talk politics…. please. President Biden is the seventh president elected to serve during my career as an Investment Adviser, and the twelfth president elected to serve during my lifetime (I was born when America still “liked Ike”). Six Republicans and six Democrats. Out of those twelve presidencies, with […]
A Few Thoughts at Year-End
Over the last 35 years spent in the investment business, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a lot of young people. Two thoughts I often find myself sharing with them are these; First, remember that the most important year of your career will not be this year, but rather next year, and that anything […]
“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” Isn’t Just a Rock Classic, But a Portfolio Theory That Speaks To Us in 2020
I suspect this will be the first and last time I’ll feel the need to invoke the wisdom of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as portfolio managers, but there is a lot to this classic rock song from 1968 that speaks to our current investment climate… especially for us value investors. In the first three […]
“Fear On” & “Fear Off” Markets and the Value of Market Punditry
Last quarter I wrote of the distorting effect fear has upon price in financial markets during panics and suggested that the long-term investor was better off focusing upon portfolio cash flow until calmer spirits returned. Fortunately, during the first and second quarters (and also during the “Great Recession of 2008-2009), income has proven to be […]
What of this, “New Normal”?
I was in the Scottsdale, Arizona area for our annual trip to meet with clients not so long ago. Today, thinking back on that trip, what’s striking is how uneventful it was. February is a good time to visit Arizona, the clients were (and always seem to be) content. Their good cheer reflective of how well markets had performed in 2019. One client had the flu and asked that we reschedule. I didn’t see that as a problem. Libby was making a follow up trip in April and would want to meet the same people anyway. Libby’s trip, of course, never happened.