The major stock market averages have been climbing recently. Given all the challenges in the world, people keep asking why the market seems so happy. Inflation and interest rates remain stubbornly high while corporate profits, measured by PE ratios, are largely flat — so why all the excitement? The first thing to understand is that…
In our prior home we had some huge pecan trees in our yard. Pecans are beautiful trees during the summer, but when they drop their leaves in the fall they look like they have died. Throughout the winter they make the yard appear quite gloomy. One day as I wandered about the pile of leaves…
My brother loves to cook and is always working on new recipes. One that he spent years on was his famous salsa. In fact, it was so famous that he opened a restaurant built around it called, “Casa Salza.” Now if you didn’t know better you might think, based on the name, that it is…
At a recent convention our company set up a booth and in it we displayed an FAA certified flight simulator. We invited visitors to take a turn at flying a mock landing, challenging them with the question, “Can you Fly the Plane?” Our booth attracted a lot of attention as many people tried, though relatively…
Dana Point is a beautiful place for a vacation, but I wasn’t there for the beach. It was just one of many due diligence trips I take as I research investment options for my clients. You can learn a great deal about a company if you spend time face to face with the principals. On…
When someone learns that the person they just met is a doctor, it is not uncommon for them to roll up their sleeve and say, “Well hey doc, since you’re here can you take a quick look at this thing?” All doctors reading this know exactly what I’m talking about. As a financial advisor I…
I was being entertained one day watching my daughter’s dog “Drax” play fetch with a grandchild. He was repeatedly retrieving a red ball until one toss bounced it straight into the swimming pool. Without hesitation, Drax leapt into the pool as he often does, although this time he was confused by a complication. Unlike the…
Nearly 600 years ago Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and in so doing, sent thousands of hard-working scribes to the unemployment line. This was not the first or the last time new technology would replace human laborers. Today, massive John Deere tractors do the work formerly done by hundreds of farm workers, and they…
Seventeen years ago, I began writing a weekly financial column for a local paper. The editor at the time cautioned me that few appreciated the challenge of producing a weekly column and predicted that I would tire out after about three months. Since then that editor has been replaced three times, the paper sold twice…
Most of us were taught by our parents to be careful where we express our religious and political views. We seem to be living in a corporate world where some executives are not remembering their parents’ advice. A political hot topic being discussed on Wall Street and elsewhere today is DEI – Diversity, Equity and…