Finding a List of Stocks for Your Portfolio
One of the most common questions I receive is, “how do you come up with a list of stocks for your portfolio that you then research further?”. Here is a brief overview.
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The True Source of the Unemployment Problem: In the Next 10 Years, 50% of Jobs Will Require Training Beyond High School Yet 25% of Students Aren’t Even Graduating from High School
The single most important line in the President’s State of the Union speech to Congress last night hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. Here it is: Over the next ten years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree. And yet, as many as a quarter of…
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Notes from General Sherman
As the American Civil War dawned, William Tecumseh Sherman, the man who was to be called the “first modern general”, remarked to a Southern friend: You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly,…
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Cost/Impact Analysis and Time Management – How to Make Your Life Better, Faster
There are a lot of things you can take from corporate America and apply to your personal life. One of my favorites is a cost/impact analysis. If you are having difficult sorting all of the work and projects you need to finish, one way to make the decision easier is to draw a box and…
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A Look at Inflation in the United States and Great Britain Since 1971
A $1.00 bill in 1971 has the purchasing power of only 18¢ today. A £1 bill in Great Britain has the purchasing power of only £0.09. That is, if you put money in a coffee can in 1971 and buried it in the back yard, you’ve lost 82% of your purchasing power in the United…
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How Would You Like to Be Remembered?
In an interview called “JK Rowling: A Year in Her Life”, that covered the period during the last year when she finished the final Harry Potter book, the interviewer asked Rowling, “How would you like to be remembered?”. Her response was poignant. As someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.…
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Is $650,000 the Magic Tipping Point in Wealth Creation?
I think the major tipping point in terms of wealth creation and financial freedom probably comes somewhere around $650,000 in productive assets with little or no debt. That isn’t an arbitrary amount of money. It comes down to a function of economics. That is an important distinction – your house, car, and furniture aren’t productive…
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Much to the Chagrin of the Art Establishment, the Numbers Indicate that Thomas Kinkade Is the Most Successful and Relevant Artist in Human History
I was enjoying a discussion with someone about hyperrealism around the time I wrote last night about my love for the works of Eric Christensen, Pedro Campos, Steve Mills, and Nathan Taylor, when they kept insisting that stil life paintings, particularly those that are close to a photograph, lack emotion. (I completely disagree – the…
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Hyperrealism Paintings Capture the Beauty of Life
Hyperrealism is my favorite style of painting. Then again, I’ve always felt like life, as it is, is beautiful. Life, in all of its messy, unpredictable madness of patterns and light, din and music. It is difficult to explain, but when I see a certain style of painting in the hyperrealism genre, I instantly get the…
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What Is Your Body of Work? Is It Something You Will Be Proud of at the End of Your Life?
There is something to be said for the concept of having a tangible, physical representation of your “body of work”. Take J.K. Rowling. Her entire fortune and career have been built upon 4,175 pages – each of which started out completely blank and that she filled with ideas – spanning seven books. It has been…
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