Stocks Archives - Joshua Kennon

More than 200 years of research shows that owning stocks, which represent an ownership stake in a business, is the best way to generate long-term wealth. Our stock investing guides will explain how common stocks work, what preferred stocks are, how to understand dividends, stock basics for new investors, and advanced stock trading techniques for those who are ready to learn the deep knowledge of finance.

Feb22021

GameStop Corp stock index is seen on a smartphone. Trading in GameStop impacts Wall Street hedge funds. PENANG, MALAYSIA - 31 JAN 2021.

Let’s Talk About the GameStop Short Squeeze

Stock MarketBy Joshua Kennon February 2, 2021 Leave a comment

The news has been filled with stories about GameStop and other stocks with high “short” interests being squeezed in recent weeks so there is no point in me rehashing the specifics. There is a lot I could cover about the actual procedure for how trades settle, how short squeezes happen, who is innocent and guilty, and a host of other relevant topics. Enough ink has been spilled, digital and print, that I’m going to focus on the bigger picture, instead. This whole situation is not good.

Jun302016

Mondelez Makes Bid To Acquire The Hershey Company

In the News, StocksBy Joshua Kennon June 30, 2016 46 Comments

Mondelez International, maker of Cadbury Chocolate and Oreo Cookies, has launched a takeover bid for The Hershey Company. Long-term owners should not be happy about it.

May202016

Nestlé Dividend Day 2016

Dividends, StocksBy Joshua Kennon May 20, 2016 33 Comments

Nestlé dividend day has come and gone for both the owners of the Swiss shares directly in Zurich and the holders of the ADR here in the United States. The board continued its tradition of hiking the dividend.

Jan202016

Stock Market Valuation, Timing, and Systematic Purchases

Market Timing, Valuation, and Systematic Purchases

Dollar Cost Averaging, Portfolio Management, Stock Market, Value InvestingBy Joshua Kennon January 20, 2016 58 Comments

Market Timing, Valuation, and Systematic Purchases I have a lot of work to do but I’m sitting at my desk, the snow is on the ground outside, I have a fresh cup of coffee in front of me, and I don’t really feel like diving into my task list quite yet. This is going to…

Jan72016

Tiffany and Company Investment Kennon-Green

Tiffany & Company Valuation – Five Years Later

Stocks, Value InvestingBy Joshua Kennon January 7, 2016 15 Comments

Almost five years ago, Tiffany & Company was glittering at time when much of the corporate world was still mired in misery from devastating losses and the implosion of Wall Street. Based on the annual report for the prior year, 2010, worldwide net sales had risen by 12% on a constant-exchange-rate basis, reaching $3,085,290,000. After-tax profits were up 39% from the year before, 2009, when the developed world had gone through the worst meltdown since the Great Depression, coming in at $368,403,000.

Nov202015

How Joe Campbell Found Himself $106,445.56 In Debt to His Broker in a Matter of Minutes Because He Didn’t Understand the Risks of Shorting Stock

Risk Management, StocksBy Joshua Kennon November 20, 2015 52 Comments

One of the major themes running through my body of work, both on this site and at Investing for Beginners, can be summed up in the statement, “Know your risks”. I hammer it home all the time; “risk-adjusted return”, talk about remote-probability events, explaining how much of wealth building is learning to “tilt probabilities in [your] favor”, admonishment to never invest in something you don’t fully understand and couldn’t explain to a Kindergartener in a couple of sentences. Consider this real-life tragedy a morality tale that can help you protect your own family.

Nov62015

Lindt White Chocolate Ice Cream and Chocolate Stocks

Food and Beverages, StocksBy Joshua Kennon November 6, 2015 44 Comments

After making the rum raisin ice cream recipe, we decided to try our hands at a white chocolate ice cream recipe, which used whole eggs (rather than egg yolks), a 1/3rd increase in the heavy-cream-to-whole-milk ratio, left out the brown sugar, granulated sugar, and salt, and a few other tweaks in terms of the order in which the ingredients were assembled.

Sep142015

Johnson and Johnson Stock Certificate Copyright Joshua Kennon

The Complex History of Johnson & Johnson

Case Studies & Profiles, Stocks, Trust FundsBy Joshua Kennon September 14, 2015 21 Comments

Johnson & Johnson is one of the most successful businesses in global history but its rise to preeminence resulted in an ugly family battle that left a wake of victims behind the misbehavior of two deeply flawed brothers.

Aug272015

Let’s Talk About Investing in Oil Stocks and the Oil Majors

Portfolio Management, Stock Market, Stocks, Value InvestingBy Joshua Kennon August 27, 2015 53 Comments

I’ve received a significant number of requests over the past few months asking that I discuss what is happening with oil, natural gas, pipeline, and refining companies; to explain how I look at the situation and the sorts of things Aaron and I discuss when we’re allocating our own capital or the capital of those who have entrusted their assets to us. It’s a big topic with a lot of niche considerations but I want to take some time today to address the oil majors; the handful of mega-capitalization behemoths such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, ConocoPhillips / Phillips 66, and BP.

Aug162015

5 Theories About Investor Behavior in the Stock Market

Stock MarketBy Joshua Kennon August 16, 2015 78 Comments

After so many years of investing, interacting with people, and writing about stocks, mutual funds, index funds, and portfolio management, I have five theories that help explain investor behavior.

It’s always odd to try and fit your life story into a few lines but here is the short version: My name is Joshua Kennon. I’m 36 years old. My husband, Aaron, and I met and fell in love as teenagers. Neither of us ever even dated anyone else – we knew we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. After graduating from high school, we moved from the Midwest to the East Coast where we studied classical music and a wide range of liberal arts.

Later, we returned to the Kansas City area to be near family. During this period, which spanned nearly thirteen years and lasted from our early twenties into our mid-thirties, we started several Internet companies and spent much of our time semi-retired, managing our own wealth thanks to the financial independence those businesses helped us achieve. I also wrote a lot during those years. In fact, the odds are good that you’ve directly or indirectly encountered me many times without realizing it. For nearly 17 years, I was the Investing for Beginners Expert at what was then known as About.com. I am the co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Investing, 3rd Edition.

Due to requests from family and friends to manage their capital alongside our own wealth, Aaron and I decided to exit retirement and launch Kennon-Green & Co.^®, a fiduciary global asset management firm that specializes in helping affluent and high net worth individuals, families, and institutions invest their capital around the world. In 2018, as part of our journey to have kids through gestational surrogacy, and the spin-up of Kennon-Green & Co., we moved to Newport Beach, California.

These days, we spend our time running and growing the firm, as we plan on it being the institution through which we pass on our own family’s wealth to our future children and grandchildren. The experience, particularly meeting such incredible people, has been one of the most rewarding of our lives. It’s a rare thing to have a career that allows you to not only do what you love for a living, but to do it with people you admire, respect, and like. We feel like two of the most blessed guys in the world.

This personal blog is a place where I talk about some of the things that interest me – cooking, finance, entrepreneurship, politics, history, economics. I’m really proud of the community we’ve built, in no small part because the typical reader around here is exceptional. Please note that in preparation of the launch of the asset management business, and to better protect our family’s privacy, Aaron and I removed thousands of articles, posts, and comments from this blog, reducing it to a fraction of its former size. This means if you are looking for something that existed prior to us coming out of retirement, the odds are good it simply isn’t available anymore.