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Hands down, I am strongly convinced the single most incompetent source of regularly published financial advice or business information of any major newspaper in the United States is the money section of USA Today. The conclusions are often outright wrong, the understanding of accounting and economics vapid, and the headlines written to achieve nothing more than clicks without leaving the reader better informed than he or she was in the beginning. It is the fiscal equivalent of fluff, only worse because fluff can be fun without leaving an inaccurate impression on something as important as national economic policy.
As an investor, you can make a lot of money if you are adept with numbers. This skill can let you see what is really going on and create mathematical models that maximize your earnings. There is a little known story that Warren Buffett was once in a meeting for Blockbuster, the movie rental chain that is now bankrupt.
The Hobby Lobby decision has been all over the news and it seems like everyone has an opinion on it (few people bothering to read the actual opinion from the Supreme Court). Despite many messages from you asking my thoughts, I haven’t written about it for several reasons. [mainbodyad]I believe this is a case that never should have been…
For several weeks, I’ve found myself ruminating on a passage from a book I recently read during my research on the good, bad, and benign of multi-tier marketing systems. This was part of my counter-evidence file; people who strongly opposed the model as currently practiced. It was written by Steve Butterfield several decades ago and is…
The Washington Post this morning had a story about the political discontentment in Russia over the outcome of the 2014 Eurovision competition. Given that a few days ago, I outright said I’d personally emigrate were I living in Russia, this confluence of events is particularly timely. I’m going to use it as an excuse to talk about something known…
When I wrote this post a year ago predicting the decline of individual freedom in Russia, I never could have imagined how far the country would descend in a mere eleven months. In addition to the Ukraine conflict, the anti-free speech laws that make it a crime to insult certain religious beliefs, the criminalization of any outward sign that you are gay under the guise of protecting minors, the ban of any potentially offensive words in film and art, and a host of other development that look like something out of a 20th century dictator’s textbook, the country has now passed a so-called “bloggers law” that requires any site with more than 3,000 visitors every day to register with the government.
One of the most famous value investors of the past 100 years was a man named Christopher H. Browne. His father started a small firm, Tweedy, Browne & Company, that was Benjamin Graham’s stockbroker. It was through Tweedy Browne that Warren Buffett bought his personal shares of Berkshire Hathaway, taking control of the textile mill he would…
We talk so often about the divide that is slowly happening in the United States as a result of socioeconomic forces. I did a double take this afternoon when I came across the front page of The Wall Street Journal involving a story based on this reality. It has a profile detailing how vastly different life experiences…
Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley-based electronic car company that has revolutionized energy efficient vehicles and become a cult icon, operates its business like Apple. It designs amazing products, then sells them direct-to-consumers through specialty branded stores, staffed with knowledgeable sales associates. By cutting out the middleman, Tesla can pass more savings on to the consumer,…
It’s like people never learned anything from the Oklahoma Satanist case last year. Unintended consequences matter. Yet, it seems like people don’t build them into their behavioral models. If you open that door, you’re not the only one that gets to walk through. It’s so simple. It’s so basic, yet people forget it time and…
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