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

Sam Merlotte from True Blood

What Sam Merlotte of True Blood Can Teach You About Investing

With the season premier of True Blood upon us, I began thinking about how lessons on life, money, and success are all around us if you just pay close enough attention.  If you understand how compounding works, it is so easy to get rich if you have enough time. Consider Sam Merlotte, the Bon Temps bartender and resident landlord.  His character is around 30 years old, give or take several years, when the show began.

Read more
Change the Way You Think About Business Ownership and You Can Change Your Life - Header

Change the Way You Think About Business Ownership and You Can Change Your Life

Shortly after World War I, Raymond Poincaré, the Prime Minister of France, decided against partnering with Royal Dutch Shell to fund the energy needs of the French people.  One of his military commanders, Colonel Ernest Mercier, worked with 90 banks and businesses to establish a new oil company called French Petroleum Company (er, technically, Française des Pétroles Compagnie since they weren’t speaking English).  The name might sound prosaic but keep in mind this was the era of “General Electric” and “Standard Oil”.  The new undertaking began operations on March 28th, 1924. Today, that business is known as Total, S.A. and it is one of the six supermajor oil powers on the planet.

Read more
You Can Still Get Rich and Make Money In a Terrible Economy with a Miserable Stock Market

You Can Still Get Rich and Make Money In a Terrible Economy with a Miserable Stock Market

Towards the back of the most recent General Electric annual report is an interesting graph.  It shows what an investor would have experienced by putting $100 into three different investments: GE shares, the S&P 500, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  It assumes that dividends were reinvested in each respective investment when they were distributed.  How were you rewarded for six years of patient investing, assuming you added no fresh cash outside of the dividend reinvestment?  Take a look.

Read more
Morningstar Berkshire Hathaway Valuation Commentary

Morningstar Says Berkshire Hathaway’s Intrinsic Value Is $89 Per Class B Share. I Think They’re Wrong.

I’ve told you in the past that Berkshire Hathaway appears to be trading at the lowest valuation in nearly a decade.  Recently, Morningstar revised its intrinsic value estimate for the Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares, stating they believe the stock has an intrinsic value of $89 per share (equal to $133,500 per Class A share since it takes 1,500 Class B shares to equal a single Class A share). I find this interesting for several reasons.  First, Morningstar’s intrinsic value calculations are often reasonable, in my opinion.  On more than one occasion, we’ve been within a single percentage point after I had valued a firm and then cross checked third-party estimates as part of the process to see if there were major disagreements.  But in this case, I just think they’re wrong.

Read more
Wendy's Hot 'n Juicy Dave Cheeseburger

Wendy’s Brilliantly Relies on Mental Models from Psychology to Reinvent the Classic Wendy’s Cheeseburger

Wendy’s recent commercial introducing the remade cheeseburger named after founder Dave Thomas is one of the best examples of marketing and psychology I’ve ever seen.  It’s brilliant; mental models applied in a constructive way.   I’m not going to take the fun out of it, but be on the lookout for some of the clues…

Read more
Jamal Mashburn Owns Papa John's and Outback Steakhouses

Why Aren’t More Athletes Like Jamal Mashburn or Ulysses Bridgeman, Jr.?

The Internet is buzzing with a clip from Terrell Owens’ reality show on VH1.  In a recent installment of the program, T.O. begins to cry about the money troubles he faces after discovering that his finances aren’t adding up, his credit score is in the 500’s, he has mortgages due on real estate and he…

Read more
Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey Brown-Forman Stock Report

Brown-Forman Is One of the Best Businesses I’ve Ever Seen

In recent days, I have been immersing myself in the annual reports and other filings of a company called Brown-Forman.  The company, which manufactures Jack Daniel’s whiskey, Chambord vodka, Korbel Champagnes, and other brands of spirits, is still controlled by the family that has owned it for more than a century, with two classes of stock trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Read more

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