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Don’t Fall For The Growth Trap
As the rest of the world lay in ruins, the United States was pretty much the only country left with production capacity intact post-World War 2. And with a lot of rebuilding that was to…
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Hardwired To Be Screwed
Gary Smith in his book, Standard Deviations talks about the evolution of peppered moths, usually found in nature as light-colored creatures. But that was not always the case. A trickle of dark-colored moths started appearing in 1848 England…
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Capital Preservation And Growth Doesn’t Exist
Stocks are volatile. And a big reason they’ll remain volatile is because of where a stock’s value comes from. The value of a stock today is the sum of all the cash flows (dividends) a…
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The Cardinal Investing Sin
Recessions are necessary to clear out the excesses. They are part of the growth cycle. They make sure that our savings get re-channeled into the right investments. They cause pain. They are supposed to cause…
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Truly Tax Free
What if there exists an account to which you contribute money to pre-tax, invest and let the money grow tax-free and then spend that money tax-free? This looks like a fantasy setup but it is…
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Stocks, Bonds, Bills & Inflation
You want to feel inflation? Try visiting a country like India every other year. I mean you are gone for a while, but you only remember the prices of the past. Then you go there…
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Nobody Wants To Get Rich Slow
My daughters each have their own investment accounts, funded with a little bit of money they receive from allowances and gifts. And regardless of how disinterested they appear or seem to appear, I talk to…
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Creative Destruction
Up until the 1890s, horses and buggies ruled the land. There were incremental innovations within that ecosystem but nothing transformative. Then Henry Ford came along with the Model-T car and the buggies were history. Gutenberg’s invention of…
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Commodities Are Never Investments
Investing is like planting a tree. You put in the effort once and then the fruits keep on coming. That is akin to buying stocks. Dividends are the fruits, and the tree is the business…
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Spotting Asset Bubbles
JFK‘s father, Joseph “Joe” Kennedy, exited the stock market right before the 1929 crash when he heard his shoeshine boy give stock advice. He figured that if a shoeshine boy is giving him a rundown on…