Newsletter

I’ve been thinking about why China might have decided to reverse course this week on “common prosperity” and support their big tech companies, sending the stocks of those companies rocketing higher.  Why now? I keep coming back to the same chilling conclusion.  Our Russian financial sanctions have essentially rendered the currency of another country, even […]

In the now almost two years since the beginning of the pandemic, it has often been said that its effects would accelerate already existing trends.  The asymmetry of risk and return in a world pulled in alternate directions by geopolitical forces, more than a decade of experimental expansionary monetary policy, the approaching fiscal cliff of

Our March quarterly letter focused on the severe correction in growth stock valuations resulting from the doubling of the yield on ten year US treasuries.  Higher rates mean that future earnings become relatively less valuable.  But that time tested corollary assumes that the market correctly anticipates the actual level and timing of those earnings.  We

Sometimes investors focus on the long view; other times, events, real or imagined, cause views to compress dramatically.  It’s always easy to reflect through the rearview mirror once the pendulum swings, but the difficulty in doing so as events are unfolding is sometimes obscured by emotion or by the sheer enormity of the information inputs

As we close the books on 2020 and enter the new year, it may be instructive to spend some time thinking about what got us here; how, in the midst of so much pain, can the stock market be at all time highs and at such lofty valuations? Of course, there is the Federal Reserve. 

As I write this letter, COVID 19 reported case counts have hit daily records in excess of 80,000 and the on again, off again, negotiations on another government stimulus seem to be…off again.  More than 11 million Americans find themselves unemployed, and Pfizer announced earnings this morning without any statement as to the efficacy of

Who could have imagined that in the course of less than thirty days the US economy could move from the strongest in generations, to the weakest since the dust bowls of the Great Depression. Yet, that is exactly what happened.

I’ve been reluctant to write this blog although many have suggested it over the last couple of years.  I’ve hesitated because it is a deeply personal story.  Sometimes I have been reminded that my story is an illustration of my character and therefore directly indicative of my abilities as an advisor.  In the late summer

April 21, 2020 My previous letters have referenced the asymmetric risks and rewards of investing in a world of geopolitical uncertainty and technological possibility. We must now weigh the effects of biological stresses on our social and economic structures.  The volatility of the final six weeks of the quarter reinforces our commitment to the ownership

As we review 2019 and anticipate 2020, the geopolitical stresses we referenced last year have been exacerbated by recent events in Iran as well as the now obvious economic decoupling of the US and China.  Yet technology continues to provide opportunities for literally exponential growth as its networking effects (the idea that tech platforms and