A referees’ job is to fairly enforce the rules of the competition. Nothing annoys a sports fan more than a referee who gets involved in deciding the outcome of the game. Watching the financial news this year, I feel more like a sports fan watching a game officiated by a group of biased referees. Unsurprisingly,…
Winter is arriving and that presents new challenges for pilots. On the positive side, the terrible summer turbulence will be gone. I won’t have my family complaining about the rough afternoon approaches into my desert airport. I love flying in the heavy, cool winter air where the engine can breathe better, the air is smoother,…
I recently read a particularly troubling story about an advisor who had stolen millions of dollars from his clients over many years. He had done so largely by forging client signatures on transfer documents. Many of the clients were single and elderly and so the advisor likely felt he would be less likely to be…
Have you ever been flying in heavy turbulence and watched those big wings bouncing up and down, wondering if they were going to break? Yeah, me too. Given how much weight those wings are carrying and the intense pressures being exerted on them as they travel hundreds of miles an hour, it is a marvel…
It was a great week in our office with my son Jared, and son-in-law Jason, both passing their CFP® exams. Apart from all the pre-requisite educational and experience requirements, they both studied almost every day for over a year to prepare for the very difficult test. You can imagine the celebration when they both passed,…
Launa sent me to the store to buy bananas. I was expecting them to be .69 a pound but when I saw they were only .49 a pound I bought more than she asked for. I like a bargain and when I see one I stock up. I am even worse when it comes to…
Last week I pointed out the irrational prices of some high-flying tech stocks and mentioned that even though I love tech in the long run, I questioned whether it was worth what Wall Street was paying. Stocks, at some point, will usually return to a reasonable level based on value. I was glad to see…
The current big market news has not, in my opinion, been the return to record levels but the way in which those levels have been attained. Many businesses are still languishing while market indexes have been pushed up largely by the meteoric rise of a relative handful of high-tech companies. I feel this is creating…
I decided to tackle the project of cleaning up my massive photo library from the past decade. It has been quite a walk down memory lane to times that were much different than they are today. While doing so, a friend called for some financial advice. He has been working on some investment opportunities but…
Assessing the effect of a Trump victory in November is much easier than evaluating a Biden win. Trump is a known entity and despite his unusual style, the actions he takes have been fairly predictable. Wall Street does not like uncertainty and so many investors and analysts are noticeably concerned about how a Biden presidency…