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


You Wouldn’t Realize How Amazing Life Is in the United States By the Media Coverage

I’ve been thinking about life in the United States.  We are a massive nation that generates $15 trillion in wealth every year.  We have consolidated assets (personal, corporate, and government) of more than $200 trillion.  Our natural resources are abundant.  Our military power immense.   Going further, take a moment to consider the following: The S&P…

Details

Mail Bag: Return Assumptions in Your About.com Articles

All morning long, I’ve been getting letters in the inbox about my “latest” article at Investing for Beginners. I have no idea what they are talking about because the article in question, which isn’t even an article, it is a “quick tip” template that was meant as a side bar to another piece, was published years ago and has not been featured anywhere on either of sites.

Details

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)

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…

Details

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

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.

Details

Two Secrets to Living a Happy Life

One of the most important lessons I learned very early in life came from a series of psychology studies that I read for entertainment.  It talked about how the big troubles we face – the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, the foreclosure of a home – are often overcome because our natural defense systems activate, causing our behavior to moderate with time so that we accept what has happened, rebuild, and put it behind us.  The things that cause unhappiness that is both severe and chronic are not these major shocks; they are the small irritations that build up and wear away at you like Chinese water torture.

Details