You know I’m a big proponent of following and monetizing your passion. If you want to be an artist, you should be. If you want to be a social worker, you should be. The key is, you make that decision knowing what it entails. The probabilities are substantial that you are not going to make as…
Earlier this year, I was watching Gossip Girl and suddenly the characters on screen were wearing varsity jackets. I immediately called the office and demanded to know why we hadn’t been the one that made the products. The response? “We were.” There have been a few other moments like that in the past couple of months…
Mental Model: The Hundredth Monkey Effect In social evolution, there is a mental model that describes the moment that knowledge, behavior, or belief reaches a tipping point (when the “100th monkey” is added), and instantaneously spreads throughout society so that it reaches the rest of a population without being taught, becoming common. The original research…
Yesterday, I explained how most of the people in the Occupy Wall Street protest haven’t yet realized the struggle isn’t between the rich and the poor – it is between the knowledge workers and manual workers, which Peter Drucker predicted in startling detail decades ago. Charles Hughes, a professor at Henderson State University, had…
I’m going to let you in on a secret. It’s not much of a secret for those who study economics or pay attention to the world. In fact, it’s been known for some time except to the average guy on the street, who is busy living his life and supporting his family. He thinks the…
Mental Model: The Thief Among Us One of the things that has perplexed me for a long time is Charlie Munger’s insistence that a significant minority of humanity is wired in such a way that they will steal if given the opportunity, regardless of whether or not they need the resources they are taking…
We already looked at how much money it takes to be in the top 1% of wealth in the United States. Now we are going to look further into the top 1% of wealth. This category, those who have between $5 and $10 million in investments, has been called by some The New Elite. Personally,…
If you want to know how to make money and begin making more money, I’ll tell you the secret. There are only two levers you can pull. To understand this simple truth, let’s start at the beginning. To grow richer, the formula looks like this: The cash flowing into your life (income) – The cash…
I am reading the Wells Fargo & Company annual report again for the fourth time this year, as well as conference call transcripts, analysts reports, and a host of other documentation. I’ve been looking at making some additional purchases of Wells Fargo & Company for the long-term holdings through some of my personal retirement trusts and plans, including the only one I discuss on the site, the KRIP portfolio, because I’m convinced the “new” bank, which includes the acquisition of Wachovia during the Great Recession and financial meltdown that doubled the size of the “old” bank, is significantly undervalued.
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.