Kennon-Green & Co. Global Asset Management, Wealth Management, and Investment Advisory

Waking Up to Aaron's Chocolate Chip Cookies with Guittard Chocolate

A Wonderful Christmas in a Strange and Unusual Year

Merry Christmas!  I hope all of you are doing well and that your celebrations  were filled with happiness, laughter, and good food! For our part, this year marked the 20th Christmas that Aaron and I have spent together.  Like every one of those other Christmases, it was one of the best days of my life (despite the unusual circumstances and challenges this year has brought).  We decided that with the world feeling so uncertain, and the need to remain socially distanced from others, it would be the perfect opportunity to stay home, wear knitted sweaters and jeans, and enjoy a classic early-to-mid twentieth century dinner; pure, old-school comfort food that envoked a sense of warmth and safety, friends and family, prosperity and peace.  

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Reading Middlemarch by George Eliot During Plane Flight

A Round-Trip Flight from California to Kentucky and Reading Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life by George Eliot

The masterpiece Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life is considered by many literary critics and academics to be the greatest novel written in the history of the English language.  A work of historical fiction, the story is set during the years 1829-1832 and follows the lives of the inhabitants of a fictional town, Middlemarch, as threads, both visible and invisible, weave the fate of their their homes, marriages, businesses, fortunes, happiness, and misery together.

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The Sum of Small Things A Theory of the Aspirational Class by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett Joshua Kennon Notes

The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and a professor of public policy at the University of Southern California, recently published a book called, “The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class”. It looks at how affluent and upper class individuals and families are now engaging in a different type of consumption that effectively strengthens their own advantages, making upward mobility more difficult for those who don’t understand the codes or values of the group.

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Eduard Derule/Shutterstock

Mental Model: The Culture Code

After writing about using words to your advantage in life and business, I began thinking of one of my all-time favorite mental models.  It comes from legendary marketing psychologist Clotaire Rapaille, who wrote about it in his treatise “The Culture Code“. Before we get into that, let me say that Dr. Clotaire Rapaille caught my attention so…

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Book Recommendation: The Crash and Its Aftermath: A History of Securities Markets in the United States, 1929-1933 by Barrie A. Wigmore

In 1985, one of the greatest scholarly works ever penned on the Great Depression was published by Barrie A. Wigmore under the title The Crash and Its Aftermath: A History of Securities Markets in the United States, 1929-1933.  Using actual data from the period that took years to acquire, analyze, and interpret, Wigmore takes 751 pages…

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The Intelligent Investor Benjamin Graham

Book Recommendation: The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

The Intelligent Investor is the portfolio management book written for the masses, made famous, in part, by the fact that it was what attracted legendary investor Warren Buffett to study under author Benjamin Graham at Columbia University.  There are several different versions, updated to reflect the time in which they were published, all offering unique…

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Kennon-Green & Co. Global Asset Management, Wealth Management, and Investment Advisory