Barcelona, the zoo, clay courts, and the art of living awake
We were in Barcelona—intentionally and accidentally at the same time.
Heather and I arrived after spending the prior week at the Rolex Monte‑Carlo Open,
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The Philosophical Investor's Blog
Trade-Offs in Monte Carlo
by 
Gary Carmell
Gary Carmell
Sometimes the Place Trumps the Play
On Trade‑Offs, Tennis, and the Economics of Time
Thomas Sowell famously defined economics not as money, markets, or math, but as the allocation of scarce resources that have alternative uses.
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The Mind Is in Every Cell — An Investor’s Reflection
by Gary Carmell
Gary Carmell
After finishing listening to Sound Man on Audible, which is a book I highly recommend for music lovers, it cycles through snippets of other books the algorithm thinks I might like. One of those books was The Uncool by Cameron Crowe.
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Pattern Recognition Is Not Prophecy
by Gary Carmell
Gary Carmell
On Energy, Empire, and the Seductive Power of Coherent Stories
One of the most intoxicating human capacities is pattern recognition.
It is the engine of intelligence, the source of insight, and the reason we survive complexity at all. But it is also the birthplace of our most confident errors—especially when patterns begin to feel inevitable.
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Houston - Gaining Energy?
by Gary Carmell
Gary Carmell
Last week was quite busy, so for this post, I decided to turn to Copilot to help me produce the output. Over the past year, our acquisitions at CWS have been heavily concentrated on properties in the Houston area. Of course,
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Hot and Hotter
by Gary Carmell
Gary Carmell
I wanted to return to the subject of housing and share some of the latest graphs related to the single-family and multifamily markets. I’ll start with the single-family sector.
Demand continues to be strong but it has decelerated from the torrid Covid-catalyzed pace of 2020.
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How To Find Satisfaction in Retirement
by Gary Carmell
Gary Carmell
With the baby boomers starting to descend down the other side of the hill with millions soon following, retirement planning has understandably become not only very important but big business as well. Most of what future retirees and financial advisors focus on are how to prepare financially so that not only can people have the choice to retire but once they do they don’t outlive their money.
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Beyond the Baseline
by Gary Carmell
Gary Carmell
Heather and I had the great pleasure of seeing some incredible tennis at Indian Wells We saw 12 matches, including the best match of all, Djokovic versus Draper, which had what the announcers categorized as one of the best points they have ever seen It was an epic 26 shot rally with incredible,
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China Syndrome
by Gary Carmell
Gary Carmell
How Energy, Geopolitics, and Inflation Are Triggering a Global Market Chain Reaction
Financial markets have a long history of overreacting to geopolitical headlines and then quietly moving on. This time feels different. The recent surge in energy prices following events in Iran—coming on the heels of U.S.
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From Tennis Courts to Ticker Tapes: A Micro Story Inside the AI Software Selloff
by Gary Carmell
Gary Carmell
The last few weeks have been brutal for software stocks. Words like carnage, panic, and even “SaaSpocalypse” have crept into investor vocabulary as shares of companies long viewed as durable compounders—Salesforce,
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