Americans love sports. Why? The reasons are seemingly endless. A popular feature is certainty. At the end of the game there’s a clear winner and loser. Along with certainty comes fairness. We want what’s “right.” What else explains instant replay? Americans loves politics. Why? The reasons are seemingly endless. A popular feature is certainty. At [...]
There’s logic and there’s emotion. If you make decisions based upon the former the following is for you. If you prefer the latter (or delude yourself into thinking you’re the former but are truly the latter) skip the logic section. LOGIC: Over time the prices of financial assets such as stocks/equities generally increase. Stock prices [...]
Carl Icahn is considered by many a great investor. He likely considers himself an activist investor. The truth is he’s someone who takes control positions in corporations and uses them as leverage to agitate for activity that unlocks short-term shareholder value. Since we never want to let facts get in the way of a good [...]
Over the weekend Warren Buffett released his annual letter. In it he noted that Berkshire’s stock returned 11% in 2019 compared to a 31.5% total return (appreciation plus dividends) for the S&P 500. Put another way Berkshire trailed “the market” by its widest margin since 2009. Such dramatic underperformance means Warren Buffett has lost his [...]
Some sectors are more/less sensitive to interest rates than others. As a result we’re left to wonder how much sway the Fed has? Food for thought: How to translate? Rate volatility and recession frequency/duration increased as manufacturing and durable goods became less important to GDP than services such as health care, education, finance and consulting. [...]
In today’s hypersensitive PC culture everything is a personal affront. Should Phil Jackson refer to LeBron James’ business partners as a posse Reverend Al will call for a boycott of all things NY. Posse after all is code for all things racist. Even pointing this out will get us in hot water with the Twitterverse. [...]
When we’re kids it’s our parents. When we’re adults it’s our spouses. They tell us something and we ignore it. Someone else tells us the same thing and we think it’s an awesome idea. We share our newfound “revelation” with our parent, spouse, etc. and they roll their eyes while exasperatingly replying, “That’s what I [...]
On Wednesday the Internal Revenue Service announced tax year 2020 annual inflation adjustments. Impacts are negligible as if often the case. A detailed description of all adjustments is available in Revenue Procedure 2019-44. Those impacting the majority of taxpayers include: The standard deduction for taxpayers filing MFJ increases from $24,400 (tax year 2019) to $24,800. [...]
Ah, academia. The proverbial ivory tower. Many are flush with assets – donations, research grants, sports revenues, etc. Are they good stewards of their capital? Do they effectively leverage their knowledge to achieve superior returns? Over the past ten years not one of the 149 institutions surveyed including the wicked smaht Harvard and MIT [...]
We tend to focus on what’s successful and ignore what isn’t. We focus on the known, the here and the now while forgetting that which previously occurred. We don’t learn from failure. We don’t learn from mistakes. We’re guilty of survivorship bias. We’ve elevated the path to success (or those we believe are causal) to [...]