Blockchain Usefulness 101

Basically, for something to have value it has to have usefulness.  The greater the amount of usefulness then the higher it’s worth.  If something has a high worth people usually would be willing to part with their hard earned money to use it.   It takes a lot of research to dig through all of the … Read more

US Government’s Fiscal Fatigue

Google search “Financial Report of the United States”’ and it pulls up the US government’s financial statements.  The recent year’s balance sheet which as of September year end 2020 reports a net negative financial position of $26 trillion dollars (it’s higher today).  Basically, this is negative equity.  Usually this would point to bankruptcy, yet since … Read more

Investing, Opinions, and the Media

The media is always trying to get the attention of readers and investors.  The biggest challenge for an investor is wondering if the investment they’ve made is a good or a bad choice, and how long they should hold the investment.  A simple media report or opinion can cause an investor to sell out of … Read more

Gauging Against Benchmarks 101

Investment returns are generally compared against benchmarks to gauge performance. Yet, yesterday’s big gainer is rarely tomorrow’s winner, and comparison against a benchmark can do more harm than good. Whether its with indexing or individual equities setting up a plan, and ignoring the noise can be important for multiple reasons. A long term focus will … Read more

How Crypto Is Changing Banking

Crypto makes headlines readily, and I suspect this will occur for a long while as the asset is still in its young childhood, and hasn’t hit it’s full understanding.  A lot of it’s future comes with understanding where crypto currencies are in our society as a whole.   Today’s banking appears technologically advanced.  With the advent … Read more

Upside Down Investing

Sometimes turning things upside down can give you a different perspective that you may not see otherwise.  With investing I’ll invert questions with regard to a business’s operations to see if it shows me something I may be missing.  I also sometimes turn charts upside down to see if it shows me something I may … Read more

Buyers, Sellers, and Traders

The other day, my son, who is twelve, was talking conceptually about traders buying or selling a stock.  In this case, he was referring to a share of Berkshire Hathaway A shares which trades over $370,000 per share as of this writing.  He was wondering how hard it would be for traders to sell a … Read more

Economy Charts 02-16-21

Here are a few economic charts that provide perspective on the economy and markets.  There are no surprises here.  The charts just affirm what’s happening.  Remember charts tell what has happened and not what is going to happen.  Most of these charts are available at longtermtrends.net. This first chart is the current liquid money supply … Read more

Vilfredo Pareto’s Discovery

Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, civil engineer, and socialist, in 1906 made the observation that within Italy 80% of real estate was owned by 20% of the population.  Pareto discovered that this phenomena expanded beyond Italy’s borders occurring in neighboring countries as well.  In later years this research by Pareto was used by Joseph Juran … Read more

Index Investing’s Big 3

Index investing has been a hot topic for investors.  Most fund managers rarely beat their benchmark index, so investing with the index seems like the best route to take for those not interested in doing the investment research work.  Today, indexing has gotten so large that there are some concerns rising to the top that … Read more