Kennon-Green & Co. Fiduciary Financial Advisor, Wealth Management, Global Value Investing


I Forgot How Much I Loathe Don Draper in Mad Men

While I’ve been working the past week or so, I’ve wanted some background noise so I loaded Netflix and began watching the 5th season of Mad Men, which I hadn’t started, yet.  I forgot how much I truly hate Don Draper.  I feel … contempt.  I loathe – that’s a rare sentiment for me but accurate, loathe – everything about him; how he treats people, how he betrays, without knowledge or consent, the women to whom he has made a commitment and whom love him, how he refuses to open himself up to others about his past or live in any sort of authentic or honest way with his family.

Details

Unless You Are a Proud Bigot and Anti-Intellectualist, You Probably Shouldn’t Be Walking Around with Che Guevara On Your T-Shirt

I believe in wild, autonomous levels of individual freedom.  Provided you aren’t harming anyone, neither your neighbors nor the government have the moral authority to prevent you from seeking your own happiness.  It is immoral for parents to force their children into marriages, as still goes on in parts of the world.  It is immoral…

Details

The Oil Tankers Are On Their Way

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.

Details

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

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.

Details