You know Your Survival Guy loves New Hampshire. Besides spending a lot of time in the Granite State, New Hampshire topped my 2022 list of Super States. Though Your Survival Guy spends most of his time in the White Mountains, New Hampshire's south is endowed with one of America's "best-run cities" in Nashua. According to WalletHub, Nashua is America's fourth best-run city. Adama McCann writes for WalletHub: The past year has been a true test of the effectiveness of local leadership. City leaders have had to facilitate the transition from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic back to a state much … [Read more...]
Archives for November 2022
Cultish CEOs Have Ruined Due Diligence
There's only so much you can learn from a company's executives. They are personally vested in the company's success, and whether or not they want to, they'll often skew the conversation in a positive direction. What's worse is that some investors seem ready to buy company stock not based on fundamentals but instead on the star power of the company's leaders. Brooke Masters reports on the dying art of due diligence in the Financial Times: It’s been a lousy month for the reputation of professional investing. The collapse of FTX revealed that everyone from racy hedge funds to staid pension … [Read more...]
Crypto Owners Dumping Luxury Cars as Industry Suffers
The barrage of mishaps and catastrophes in the cryptocurrency market just keeps on going. Following the collapse of major cryptocurrency exchange FTX, other crypto-related companies have seen their fortunes falter. BlockFi, a crypto lender, has filed for bankruptcy, Bitfront, another crypto exchange, is shutting down, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has been shoring up its "Secure Asset Fund," and in the last couple weeks, at least three big crypto players have died in mysterious circumstances. It's been a rough month for the industry. Now, crypto owners who spent big … [Read more...]
Bargain Buyers Picking Over the Bones of the Secondary Technology Market
Secondary trading in shares of technology companies that haven't yet gone public with an IPO was pretty much nonexistent from March to July. Now, some traders are beginning to pick over the bones of the market, looking for deals. Julie Steinberg and Ben Dummett report for The Wall Street Journal: Many startups held on to lofty valuations for months after the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite began to sell off in November 2021. However, the market’s resilience started to wane this summer, as venture-capital firms and hedge funds began to unload to make up for losses in their public … [Read more...]
ELON MUSK: “ESG Is the Devil”
You have been reading a lot in the news about Elon Musk lately. His leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, and now Twitter make him perhaps the most famous billionaire on earth. You would think that Musk's most famous company, Tesla, which builds electric cars, would be a darling of environmentally focused investors, especially those pushing the "environmental, social, governance" (ESG) indices. Instead, Tesla has found itself being tossed from ESG funds, coincidentally as Musk has become more vocal in his criticisms of the left wing of American politics. Over the weekend, Musk responded to a tweet … [Read more...]
Who’s Going to Win When the Highest Grossing Drug Ever Loses Its Patent?
According to David Wainer, writing in The Wall Street Journal, when the patent on AbbVie's drug, Humira, expires next year, there's going to be a big winner, but it may not be the consumer. He writes: Starting next year the highest-grossing drug of all time, AbbVie increase; green up pointing triangle‘s Humira, will finally face competition from copycat biologics in the U.S. Yet the makers of the complex generics known as biosimilars won’t necessarily be the biggest winners. The top beneficiaries could instead be the middlemen such as Cigna decrease; red down pointing triangle and CVS … [Read more...]
A Christmas Story: Rich Grandchild, Poor Grandchild
Originally posted December 18, 2020. In this most wonderful time of the year, you don’t need to break the bank to help a grandchild. Give the gift that keeps on giving—COMPOUND INTEREST—and let TIME do the heavy lifting. You don’t need to fill Santa’s sleigh with cash. Tuck a little into their stocking each year while sugar-plums dance in their heads using my favored Fidelity UGMA. Start early. It is the key. Because time is the magic that makes money fly. And yes, TIME is a double-edged sword. It goes by too quickly—and yet it turns hundreds into hundreds of thousands. Do what I … [Read more...]
The Death of Value Investing
Originally posted January 23, 2018. Value investing is dead, or so one might have assumed based on the relative performance of value portfolios during the current bull market. Value investors have been fighting a losing battle over the last decade. The chart below compares the difference in the performance of value stocks, as measured by the Russell 1000 Value Index and the Dividend Achievers Index to growth stocks as measured by the Russell 1000 Growth index. Each line on the chart represents the difference in the 5-year compounded annual growth rate of the value index and the growth … [Read more...]
You’ll Love This if You’re Dreaming of an Active Retirement Life
Originally posted January 15, 2020. My clients are ski bums. Well, not exactly, considering they own their own place in the Tetons. But rising before dawn, queuing up for the first tram, especially on powder days, is a ski bum’s life. That’s why it was no surprise to receive this email: Hi EJ! Snow over a hundred inches so far in 2020! Every day a powder day! Several more days for this storm cycle! We have been very happy with your care of our financials. Skiing has been fabulous. More powder tomorrow! Will give you a call when we come up for air! When they get home in … [Read more...]
Dividends are Vital. The Reason Why Is Compound Interest
Originally posted September 8, 2017. Why are dividends important? Because they allow the power of compound interest to work for you. I was speaking with a client yesterday who is in the process of helping his children establish Roth IRAs. I told him it’s amazing how just getting in the game can do wonders for one’s financial well-being: Imagine what this will look like in 50-years. Remember, just the process of starting an investment puts you or a loved one light years ahead of those bogged down and doing nothing at all. Take a look below at the power of compound interest. An investor … [Read more...]
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