While most of the financial media focuses on the price of oil and what it will do to consumer spending in the next few months, a tectonic shift in technology is underway that will have enormous consequences over the next several years. Investors who are myopically focused on the short-term, speculative, sector-timing or cycle-timing schemes that dominate...
Monday, May 26, 2008
Memorial Day May 26, 2008
On Memorial Day we honor those who solemnly swore "to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."It is also fitting to consider that the Constitution they have defended and laid down their lives to protect is the source of all the freedoms we enjoy in America, guaranteeing the right of the people...
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The active vs. passive debate
In our previous post, we pointed out features of mutual funds which can act as an obstacle to following the Taylor Frigon dictum of building future wealth upon a foundation of the ownership of successful business enterprises benefiting from capable and dynamic management operating in a future field for fertile growth, and owning them over a long period...
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Some drawbacks of mutual funds
We've written in numerous previous posts about our conviction that "ownership of successful business enterprises which continued to grow and prosper over a long period of years" should form the bedrock foundation of capital investments for most investors. While there are many other important investment strategies which should be added in certain situations...
Friday, May 16, 2008
Grading on a curve in the equity ratings business? ? ?
Wednesday, a major national broker-dealer announced its intention to change its equity research ratings system, starting on June 2 of this year.The amazing thing about this new system is that it mandates a distribution of ratings within each "coverage cluster" (defined as a single analyst or multiple analysts sharing a common region, sector, or classification)....
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
"Capable, dynamic management operating in a fertile field for future growth"
As we have repeated many times on this blog, the investment process we endorse is not based upon trying to time market movements but rather is founded upon ownership of carefully selected companies with certain characteristics which are held through the market and economic cycles. Please see previous posts here, here, and here for discussion of that...
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The inflationary Fed, part II
More observers are beginning to be concerned about inflation, particularly now that the widely-anticipated "recession" has not arrived and the credit scare that may have reached its height in March has been addressed by the creation of new lending facilities.As we noted in March, those new lending facilities were an effective response that we thought...
Friday, May 09, 2008
Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cloud Computing
A few months ago, we called attention to the excellent article by George Gilder and Bret Swanson that pointed out some of the indicators of the arrival of the "third phase of Net evolution" that Mr. Gilder has seen approaching for two decades.In the wake of the "collapse" last weekend of Microsoft's bid to buy Yahoo*, there has been plenty of analysis...
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
A perspective on San Francisco's restriction of chain stores
Today, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that San Francisco "is increasingly hostile to chain stores and restaurants," meaning (in the definition of city legislation enacted a few years ago) any store or restaurant with more than eleven outlets nationally and two or more repeated characteristics among either trademark, merchandise, uniforms, facade,...
Friday, May 02, 2008
Still not a recession, part II
Back when we were criticizing "The current recession drumbeat" of the media in November, or declaring in our "Happy New Year" post that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, a recession was still not imminent, there were very few others who agreed. By February 4, when we wrote "Still not a recession," the conventional wisdom was even more settled.Now,...
