Make no mistake. I am a believer in Jeff Bezos. I even coined a term in his name: The Bezos Law: If Jeff Bezos enters an industry, prices will be lower. But that doesn’t mean I’m a buyer of the stock. Remember the dot-com boom and bust? I do. I had a front row seat as a college intern with the founding team of a grocery home delivery start-up. It was the Webvan of the east coast, with the same unfortunate result; Bankruptcy. What went wrong? Turns out, among other things, shoppers like to pick their own produce. What’s changed? Not much, as far as I can tell. Will FreshDirect be … [Read more...]
Income Investing: The Nightmare is Ending
For eight long years, conservative investors, retired investors, and income investors have suffered through a nightmare environment. Risk-free income in the form of full-faith-and-credit U.S. Treasury bills has been held off the market by a Federal Reserve more interested in serving the interests of Goldman Sachs than America’s savers. As our chart shows, that nightmare appears to be ending. There is still a long ways to go to get back to normal, but an investment in 6 month T-bills will yield you more than a full percentage point in income today. It will only take you about 72 years to … [Read more...]
Apple Loses its Edge?
Is $5 billion spent on a company’s headquarters really money well spent? In the following article about the construction of the Apple’s new Mothership it seems as if those who remain are still worried about not disappointing Steve Jobs. Has Apple lost its edge? Amid all the fanboy anticipation, though, Apple has also taken some knocks for the scale and scope of the thing. Investors urging Apple to kick back more of its bounty to shareholders have questioned whether the reported $5 billion in construction costs should have gone into their own pockets instead of a workplace striving for … [Read more...]
Make Your Bed: Advice for SEALs and Investors
Make Your Bed by Admiral William H. McRaven (U.S. Navy Retired) is a little blue-book about little things that can change your life…and maybe the world. It was inspired by the commencement speech McRaven gave on May 21, 2014. Start your day with a task completed. Make your bed. And, as he explains in Chapter Ten: Never Quit. McRaven told Business Insider in an interview: Admiral McRaven: We used to have a saying in SEAL training, "Take it one evolution at a time." Meaning don't look six months down the road. Don't ask yourself or don't look and say, "My gosh, I've got more swims and more … [Read more...]
Portfolio Strategy: How Jeff Bezos Can Teach You to Be a Successful Investor
It may seem ironic that the CEO of America’s least profitable big company has insight to offer on investing in profitable businesses, but he does. Yes, Jeff Bezos ran Amazon.com for years without turning a meaningful profit—decades even, but there is no denying the guy is brilliant. In the span of about 20 years, Bezos managed to turn Amazon.com into one of America’s largest companies. He continues to disrupt and decimate brick and mortar retail, and under his leadership Amazon has spawned an entire new industry in the form of Amazon Web Services. How did Bezos do it? A relentless … [Read more...]
The Best Investment You Can Make Ever
The best investment you can ever make is your work. Steve Jobs said “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.” I like that quote. But come on Steve, work can be a pain. No one loves getting up at 4:30am. But after years and years of doing your work you wake up one day and realize, “hey, I might not have to work.” And … [Read more...]
How Can I Be a Great Investor Like Richard C. Young?
How can you be a great investor like Richard C. Young? Study. Keep it simple. Tell it the way it is. All of that comes to mind. But here’s what I want to share with you that I think you’ll find helpful. It’s a constant battle. It’s a ton of work. It’s a daily grind. It’s not easy. This week I’ve been studying some old Richard Russell reports from the late 70s. I feel like I’m actually living through the day to day markets with out of control government spending, fear about interest rates rising, inflation, and a lame economy. Sound familiar? What I’ve enjoyed most is reading … [Read more...]
This is a Serious Problem for Investors
We have covered the problem of fake news, media bias, and the declining quality of many of the best print publications in the past (see How to invest in an age of compromised and biased information for example), but much of the coverage on this topic from the mainstream media has been focused on political news. Politics isn’t the only topic where fake news and bias are a problem. As the FT reports, fake news has infiltrated the financial markets. And why wouldn’t it? The proliferation of free “investment analysis” on the internet has made the job of the fraudsters, hucksters, and other … [Read more...]
Portfolio Strategy: Where Are You Getting Your Financial Advice?
It’s fashionable today to talk about how Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are laying the wood to the actively managed mutual fund industry. Cumulative flows into passive strategies and ETFs has been staggering, while the outflows from active funds have been similarly spectacular. Some advisors and former brokers have become self-righteous about ETFs and indexing, but you didn’t hear a word about ETFs from this crowd for decades. ETFs have been around since 1993, but many in the industry were too busy hawking high expense ratio funds with monster front-end sales loads and back-end marketing … [Read more...]
How to Learn About Investing
Investing isn’t one of those tasks that you should learn by doing. That’s not to say that you won’t learn a lesson or two about investing if you dive right in, you will, but the lessons may end up costing you more money than you bargained for. The Best Way to Learn About Investing The best way to learn about investing is to do so with books. But which books? You don’t want to just read anything on investing. Ninety percent of what has been published on investing and the stock market isn’t worth your time, effort, or money. You can do more damage than good if you don’t make a diligent effort … [Read more...]
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