Investing is the process of putting aside money today in exchange for more money in the future. This process involves risk but, when well managed, can help grow your wealth over time due to the power of compounding. This is the investing archive that includes articles published on JoshuaKennon.com. If you are looking for more great content, visit Joshua’s Investing for Beginners site at About.com, a division of The New York Times.

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

Jul132013
Dr Pepper Snapple Investment

An Example of Real World Value Investing Through the Lens of Dr. Pepper Snapple Group

Value Investing29 Comments

One of the biggest dangers an investor faces when he or she decides to buy individual stocks for a portfolio is the temptation to chase something “exciting”, regardless of valuation.  That’s a foolish undertaking.  Valuation matters a great deal.  The exact same business might be a wonderful investment at 10 times earnings but a horrible investment at 50 times earnings.  It’s not enough for profits to rise, or dividends to expand; they have to offer a good return, based on what you paid, relative to a reasonable opportunity cost hurdle such as the long-term 30-year Treasury bond yield.

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May122013
Silent Trust Funds and FAFSA Financial Aid

Don’t Silent Trust Funds Constitute a Massive Loophole in Financial Aid Calculations?

Student Loans, Trust Funds10 Comments

My morning was spent reading the New Hampshire Bar Journal, Winter 2010 edition because I was interested in a piece by Joseph F. McDonald, III called Migrating Trusts to New Hampshire: The “Why” and the “How”.  New Hampshire, along with a very few other states, allows the existence of something known as a “silent trust” or “quiet trust”. It made me realize: I think a person could use these to drive a truck through the college financial aid process.

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Apr192013
BP Gas Station in Chicago

The Oil Tankers Are On Their Way

Cool Stuff, Stocks4 Comments

One of the tricks I use to think of the stocks I hold as real businesses, just like the operating companies we own, is to get a physical representation of the firm, putting it in an investment cabinet.  Now that I am building a 25-year energy portfolio as a personal side project for my household, I already have replica die cast oil tankers on their way from retailers and eBay.  I’m having a hard time finding a comparable quality Total SA tanker, if they are even manufactured.

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Apr182013
Energy, Oil, Natural Gas, Pipelines, Refining, Coal and Timber Investments Header

Energy, Oil, Natural Gas, Pipelines, Refining, Coal and Timber

Asset Allocation, Portfolio Management32 Comments

One of the ways I manage my life is to sit in a room several times a year, staring off into the distance, and trying to imagine 5, 10, 15, 20, 30+ years in the future.  I ask myself what things I wish I had done when I was younger, what things I would have wanted to avoid, what risks I would have wanted to take, and what experiences I would have wanted to have. A topic that has come up several times during these exercises is the concept of energy assets.  A portfolio of energy assets is fundamentally different in nature than almost any other security, business, or holding.

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Mar302013
TreasuryDirect

If You Are Sitting on a Huge Pile of Cash, There Is Only One Place to Park It (and It Is Not In a Bank)

Treasury Bills, Bonds and Notes13 Comments

For the past day, I’ve been thinking about a 65 year old man named John Demetriou.  He was from Cyprus, but moved to Australia, where he spent 35 years working “days, nights and weekends in Sydney markets selling jewellery and imitation jewellery” according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Wanting to be in his home country, and…

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Mar292013
An Academic Example of Cash Flow Differing from Reported Earnings - McDonald's Corporation

A Quick Cash Flow Statement Lesson – A Look at How McDonald’s Real Payout Ratio Is 110%, Not 54% As First Appears

Accounting & Finance, Stocks2 Comments

McDonald’s is one of those businesses that I love.  The last time we talked about it was when I wrote the 25 Year Investment Case Study of McDonald’s, and showed how you could have turned $100,000 into anywhere between $1,839,033 and $5,547,089 depending on how you handled dividend reinvestment and the Chipotle split-off back in 2006, and the sorely lacking media coverage of McDonald’s results in February.  No matter which way you look at it, despite periods of overvaluation and undervaluation, alternating with the underlying performance and the emotional moods of shareholders, McDonald’s has been a fantastic company.  It makes its employees and shareholders a lot of money.  It gives society something it wants, whether that be a plain salad with side of fresh fruit and a non-sweetened iced tea or a double cheeseburger with french fries and a Coca-Cola.

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