As I noted last week, this year’s Investor Social is full beyond capacity, so unless you’ve already reserved a spot, I won’t see you in person tonight. Not to worry, we’re going to find a bigger venue next year and may try and figure out video for a webcast (we’ll see). I don’t want to steal too much of my own thunder and am kind of wiped out from preparing,… Read More
Last week, I said I would preview slides from the 5th Annual Investor Social on January 30th. Before I go any further, I want to announce that we’ve hit capacity on the Investor Social and can’t accept any more RSVPs. We’re going to have to find a new venue for next year! Thank you to everyone that is attending! Last week, I showed a slide that I’ll discuss but offered… Read More
Over the past five years, the hottest investments have all had the word ‘private’ in front of them: private equity, private credit, and private real estate. Private investments, or ‘privates’ as they are colloquially known, buy whole companies or properties or make direct loans to companies. When they buy companies or properties, the private fund managers can change management, business strategy, capital structure, or anything else that will allow them… Read More
You might not be surprised to learn that I love investment-related podcasts. I listen to about a dozen of them fairly regularly and am often impressed by the guests they get. A recent episode of the Meb Faber Show featured an hour-long interview with Professor Gene Fama. Fama is probably the most influential academic in modern finance after creating the Efficient Market Hypothesis in the early 1970s and co-creating the… Read More
My article from last week, which you can read here, prompted a few people to ask derivations of, “Why don’t we sell our stocks – or at least reduce them – until the recession is over and sidestep some losses?” It’s an understandable question, but it makes me uncomfortable because I have some powerful memories of the 2008 global financial crisis when clients who bailed out of the market still felt… Read More
I heard an amazing statistic a few weeks ago: Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s investment vehicle, could lose 99 percent of its value and still enjoy a track record that beats the S&P 500. Over the weekend, Berkshire released their second-quarter earnings, which reminded me of my newfound fact, so I pulled up the data. Sure enough, it’s true. And perhaps even more remarkably, it’s been consistently true since the year… Read More
Inflation is hard to measure, which is why there are many ways to measure it. In addition to the Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) indexes that I’ve discussed in recent months, there are also Producer Price Indexes (PPI), the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) indexes, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) purchased price index, the GDP price index, and the GDP Price Deflator index. Oh my! While I don’t intend for this letter… Read More
What a difference week makes! Last week, with the market down -18.2 percent from its all-time high and dipping into bear market territory at some points during the day, it felt like a bear market was a sure thing. Of course, it may still happen, but with stocks now down -12.8 percent, it doesn’t feel as imminent. Last week’s article focused heavily on bear markets, almost to the point of… Read More
I’ll bet you know the old Ben Franklin saying that ‘the only things certain in life are death and taxes.’ While those things are certain, there is, thankfully, much more to life. A full life will mean different things to different people, but there are probably common elements that include family, friends, good health, prosperity, spiritual wellbeing, and fun, among other things. We also know that life can be difficult…. Read More
There is a lot of hype in our industry about ESG investing, which is the new way to talk about socially responsible investing (SRI). The new name, ESG, stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance. The last time I wrote about socially responsible investing was in 2014, and you can read the article here. I wrote that we don’t use ESG funds (which I called SRI back then) unless clients direct… Read More
