Some of America’s largest businesses that have a major impact on almost every U.S. citizen and billions more internationally, are now governed by a dual-class structure that gives all of the voting power to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg. Google and Facebook are the fourth and sixth biggest companies in the U.S. Both firms have share class structures with unequal voting rights. No way public companies this big and influential should be controlled by young founders without adult supervision. Because the dual-class prevents shareholders from changing the structure though regular voting, big … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2018
Thinking of Moving for Retirement? Check This Out
As elections come up, where we live and the political/governance climate there comes into sharper view. This piece I wrote on August 10, 2017 examines the tax climates of the states, and how retirees should make that a factor in their plans. Guess who needs the most of your dollars to survive? You guessed it, Washington D.C. If you're a retiree who has been living and working in Washington D.C. for your entire career, you would without a doubt stretch your dollars further if you moved to a less expensive locale. Washington D.C. is the most expensive place to live in the continental … [Read more...]
Retirement Benefits: They’re not all in Dollars
You may have noticed stocks are acting a little funny lately. Whether it’s scary October, midterms, or earnings, there’s always something to worry about. I’ll tell you, the phones here have been pretty quiet from clients. Many are packing up for Florida, travelling in Paris, or enjoying the outdoors. For example, I received a picture emailed from my client at his fishing cabin in Alaska enjoying some freshly caught crabs, writing: “All retirement benefits are not in dollars. Thanks for the help making this happen. I’m the one holding the pot.” He’s retired. Stays off the grid three weeks at … [Read more...]
Tim Cook Slams Rivals’ Surveillance of Consumers
In Brussels on Wednesday, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc., tore into other tech companies for performing what he called "surveillance," on users by collecting their data and breaching their privacy. Bloomberg's Natalia Drozdiak and Stephanie Bodoni report: In some of his harshest rebukes of his competitors yet, Cook sought to distinguish the iPhone maker from Silicon Valley competitors, like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook, both under scrutiny for recent user data breaches. “We shouldn’t sugarcoat the consequences,” he said Wednesday. “This is surveillance and these stockpiles of … [Read more...]
Making Money the Old Fashioned Way
You may be familiar with Ronald Read’s story. It’s a story worth telling over and over and over again to anyone you know. My father in law Dick Young wrote: Hard to even comprehend, but this great story, courtesy the WSJ‘s Anna Prior, recounts how Ronald Read accumulated an estate valued at almost $8 million. Mr. Read, who passed away at the age of 92, made a modest living pumping gas for many years at a Gulf gas station in Brattleboro, Vermont. A Five-Inch Stack of Stock Certificates How did Ronald Read manage to become a multi-millionaire? Mr. Read invested in dividend-paying blue-chip … [Read more...]
Look What’s Rising While Everything Else is Falling
Since the end of August, the Dow is down, the Russell 2000 index of small stocks is down, bonds are down, oil is down, foreign stocks are down, and guess what is rising? Gold is up nicely with technicals indicating further upside is possible. See charts below. … [Read more...]
Retail Fight: Prepare for the Holidays
Target is ramping up its efforts to compete with rivals Walmart and Amazon by offering free two-day shipping on online orders during the holiday season. Khadeeja Safdar reports in The Wall Street Journal: Target Corp. TGT +0.77% said it plans to offer free two-day shipping on online orders this holiday season, undercutting competitors like Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.61% and WalmartInc. WMT +0.51% that have requirements for similar services. The Minneapolis-based retailer on Tuesday said starting Nov. 1 until Dec. 22, it will offer the service on hundreds of thousands of items without a … [Read more...]
Your Retirement Life: A Dire Warning Part IV
Last week Facebook revealed a data breach affecting 30 million accounts and shares are down about 27% since July. These and other longer-term problems at Facebook have led several public pension funds to back a shareholder proposal to separate Mark Zuckerberg from at least one of his dual roles as CEO and Chairman of the board. The Wall Street Journal explains though that the problem for the petitioners is Mr. Zuckerberg's “lock on the bulk of Facebook’s supervoting shares, each of which gives him 10 times the votes of average shareholders. According to Facebook’s latest proxy, his share of … [Read more...]
Buyer Beware: Goldman Goes Retail
Goldman Sachs has signaled it is taking a step down to provide services to the masses. With online banking offerings, mutual funds and ETFs, Goldman is looking to widen its customer base. The investment bank may even have a robo-advisor offering clients advice, reports CNBC: While the bank hasn't officially said what form the product will take, one option is a robo-advisor, according to people with knowledge of the plans. Most robo-advisors have low or no account minimums to start investing. Presumably, the company could offer mutual funds and ETFs created in-house through its digital … [Read more...]
Calper’s OPM
Turns out, members of California’s public pension don’t like it when the C-suite are activists with other people’s money. The workers expressed their dissatisfaction with pension-fund-activism by firing CEO Priya Mathur and replacing her with Jason Perez. New CEO Perez's main point of criticism against Mathur's approach was her focus on "environmental, social and governance investing," which is a euphemism for using the pension fund's money to play politics. Perez ran on a platform of refocusing the pension fund on "the agency’s fiduciary duty to maximize investor returns." Sound … [Read more...]
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