Blog Archives

D(ata)-Day

Data D(ata)

I have been turning to charts more regularly for my weekly blog posts than I have in the past. Like most people, I see many of the challenges and price pressures resulting from the massively disrupted global supply chain. It shows up in terribly unreliable contractors (I’m having a pool built so I am experiencing this first hand) and the significant increase in the cost of materials that are leading to the rationing of some goods like plywood and even chlorine.

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A Deeper Dive into Housing

Deep dive into housing

Last week I discussed the possibility that housing could be the canary in the coal mine with regard to an important area of the economy starting to be impacted by higher prices. I wanted to go more in-depth with many more housing-related charts and then end with one non-housing chart that I think trumps everything else in terms of why I think the Fed will remain on hold in terms of raising rates.

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Healthy Ecosystems and the Philosophical Investor

Ecosystem

The ecosystem and nature are fascinating to me. What I find so interesting is how systematic and interconnected it is and how species and ecosystems evolve. I naturally (pun intended) wanted to see if there were any lessons that could be applied to investment firms like CWS (and ourselves individually) from the characteristics of healthy ecosystems.

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Stuck Ships and Chips

stuck ships in Suez Canal March 2021

[UPDATE] 3:00 PM Egypt – 6 AM PST the Ever Given was refloated and is on the move again. Credit is given to the full moon bringing the spring higher tides, 14 tug boats, and the 27,000 meters of sand removed. The following was written prior to this news.

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Stimulus: Should I Save or Should I Go (Spend)

Stimulus save or spend

Economic growth is projected to increase quite substantially now that the $1.9 trillion stimulus has been passed. The following chart shows that economists are forecasting the strongest growth since the Reagan years.

US gross domestic product, change from 4th quarter to 4th quarter 1970 - 2020

Not surprisingly, a lot of this projected growth is predicated on the spending of built-up savings from multiple stimulus packages that have passed and been disbursed.

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Platforms and an Income Streaming Sonnet

Bob Dylan Gary Carmell William Shakespeare sonnet

I was privy to a conversation between two females, one of whom is a senior in high school. She was lamenting the fact that her English teacher had given her class an assignment to write a sonnet. This caught my attention as, while I have expressed myself a few times over the years by writing haikus,

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Covid Housing Fever

housing market fever

I subscribe to The Daily Shot which is an economics and finance-oriented site that aggregates a tremendous number of charts to give investors a great visual overview of key aspects of the economy, both domestic and global, as well as financial markets.

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Known Unknowns from Alaska - CWS Planning Meeting

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of traveling to Alaska for a small CWS planning meeting on a private boat. To enter Alaska without being quarantined, one had to prove he or she tested negative for COVID, which fortunately I did.

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Renter Nation Depicted

Cedar Springs

We’ve talked a lot about the advent of the Renter Nation at CWS for a number of years. When the housing bubble was in full force we used to say that people were renters but they didn’t know it because they had no equity in their homes due to the very aggressive financing that was available at the time.

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Japan: The Land of the Rising Sun and Shrinking Population

Japan

I spent six days in Japan, in 2014, visiting Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hiroshima. I went to Sumo wrestling, a 430-year-old restaurant, toured some beautiful temples and gardens, visited the peace park in Hiroshima, and of course, I did some karaoke. The Japanese are extremely service oriented and show great attention to detail.

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