Joshua Kennon is a Managing Director of
Kennon-Green & Co., a private asset management firm specializing in global value investing for affluent and high net worth individuals, families, and institutions. Nothing in this article or on this site, which is Mr. Kennon's personal blog, is intended to be, nor should it be construed as, investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell a security or securities. Investing can result in losses, sometimes significant losses. Prior to taking any action involving your finances or portfolio, you should consult with your own qualified professional advisor(s), such as an investment advisor, tax specialist, and/or attorney, who can help you consider your unique needs, circumstances, risk tolerance, and other relevant factors.
How can people do this and live with themselves? This is the sort of thing that if I were running a company, I don’t care if we made millions of dollars a year in profit doing it, I’d shut it down. I believe it is immoral. Sure, it breaks no laws that I know of but it strikes me as ethically wrong. It is the reason we need stronger consumer protection laws in the United States. I believe it preys on the ignorant; the people who don’t know any better and who are trying to secure their future.
In 1927, Hugh Roy Cullen was approached by Jim West, a wealthy lumberman who had invested in projects with Cullen in the past. On a Saturday, West called Cullen to his downtown Houston office, where he made the following offer: I’ve got $3,000,000 lying around. And I’ve got the West Production Company, which don’t amount…
Across the Atlantic Ocean, several members of the European Union are experiencing an economic catastrophe that is, for them, on scale with what the United States went through during the Great Depression. To illustrate the depth of the pain using two examples, the unemployment rate in both Spain and Greece now stands at 27.2%.
I’m going to walk you through how I’d save money if I were a typical 25 year old with a spouse and one kid on a $40,000 salary.
This mail bag question is a tough one about the conflict between two competing freedoms when dealing with public accommodation laws. Thanks for sending it in, I enjoyed thinking about it during an ice cream break at the office today. It was a fun distraction. (But not nearly as fun as calculating the 25 year…
In honor of the new energy portfolio I’m setting up for my family, I thought I’d do a 25 year case study of an investment in Chevron common stock. The point is to illustrate how the biggest, most boring companies on the planet are not, in fact, so boring when you look at the remarkable…
While I’ve been working the past week or so, I’ve wanted some background noise so I loaded Netflix and began watching the 5th season of Mad Men, which I hadn’t started, yet. I forgot how much I truly hate Don Draper. I feel … contempt. I loathe – that’s a rare sentiment for me but accurate, loathe – everything about him; how he treats people, how he betrays, without knowledge or consent, the women to whom he has made a commitment and whom love him, how he refuses to open himself up to others about his past or live in any sort of authentic or honest way with his family.
I found a replica Total SA oil truck for the collection, which I am planning on keeping in my home study for the new, personal energy portfolio I’ve setup for my family over the next 25+ years. It’s on its way from Germany. It is a 1:43 model, not the usual 1:64 model that is more popular in the United States, but that’s just a cultural difference.
The weather has finally turned nice in the Kansas City region so my day was spent in the landscaping section of several home improvement stores, picking up entire trees, flowers, garden supplies, and landscaping features. We ended up going everywhere from Lowe’s to local businesses to find what we wanted. I’m exhausted, and can hardly…
I believe in wild, autonomous levels of individual freedom. Provided you aren’t harming anyone, neither your neighbors nor the government have the moral authority to prevent you from seeking your own happiness. It is immoral for parents to force their children into marriages, as still goes on in parts of the world. It is immoral…
