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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.
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.
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.
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…
There are a handful of books I re-read to refresh some of the timeless lessons I think are important. One of them, which you can probably tell from some of my recent posts, is Security Analysis. I recently started my way through the updated Sixth Edition, based on the 1940 text, and the clarity of thought never ceases to amaze me.
I completely forgot that I ordered Nestlé 125 Years 1866-1991 by Jean Heer earlier this month when I mentioned I was looking at the firm for the first time in a while, and then later, buying a few shares for my family’s permanent holdings. When it showed up today, it was like Christmas in July!
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…
Legendary distressed debt investor, and equity mutual fund manager, Martin J. Whitman has been called “the vulture of Wall Street” for his knack at finding amazing opportunities in beat down securities. When the rest of the world is falling apart, he can often be found, cash in hand, buying up things that will be worth…
At the time it was published by the most successful mutual fund manager of all time, Peter Lynch, One Up on Wall Street was considered pie-in-the-sky by some because it was addressed to the average investor who wanted to select individual stocks for a portfolio, recounting wildly successful investment strategies. One Up on Wall Street was…
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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