Blog Archives

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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Built To Last - Finite vs. Infinite Games

Finite and Infinite Games

I had the pleasure of seeing Crazy Rich Asians last week. It was quite enjoyable and I very much recommend it. There is a scene in the movie that represents the clash of values between generations and cultures (Chinese and Chinese American) in which the matriarch criticizes her son’s Chinese American girlfriend for being fixated on the American obsession of happiness and wanting to be happy.

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The Power of No - When to Use It

The-Power-of-No

One of the hallmarks of very successful people is the ability to say “No”. Of course, there are those people who say no because they don’t want to do the work or they are obstinate and sometimes don’t like being told what to do. I’m not talking about those types of individuals.

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Scars & Unhealthy Risk Avoidance of Skyrocketing Interest Rates

Risk Avoidance Interest-Rate

“The spectacular rise in interest rates during the 1970’s and early 1980’s pushed many long-term market rates on prime credits up to levels never before approached, much less reached, in modern history. A long view, provided by this history, shows that recent peak yields were far above the highest prime long-term rates reported in the United States since 1800,

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See and Wait

See and Wait

Not surprisingly, the Fed pulled the trigger and raised short-term interest rates by 0.25% for the first time since last December. I thought I would convey what I think are the most pertinent variables to be monitoring in the wake of the Fed tightening. I’m calling this blog post “See and Wait” as I will be showing many charts and opine on some of the ramifications but we will have to wait to see how it unfolds in the real economy.

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Safe Space - Can We Watch Things Unfold from a Safe Distance?

Safe Space - Gary Carmell

I recently read about Tesla’s autopilot software update being able to look one and two cars ahead to determine if they are safe or at risk of an accident and, if so, this would then trigger the Tesla to slow down to avoid it.

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Finding the Bottlenecks and Pain Points

removing bottlenecks

CWS has a sister company that focuses on corporate housing. They provide temporary housing for business people, interns, long-term, special projects for companies, etc. I am one of the advisory board members and it’s been such a treat to see how the company has grown and prospered over its 25 years in business.

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The Power of Mindset

CWS State of the Company Mindset

Last week we completed seven of our eleven State of the Company meetings that Tracy Hayes, the president of our sister company CWS Corporate Housing, and I have been doing for 26 years. And while it’s a lot of travel in a relatively short period of time,

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The Last Decade in Charts - Here Come the Roaring 20's

Charts

With the 2010s having come to an end and the roaring 20s starting I thought I would look back over the past decade to convey key trends that impacted the economy and apartment investors.

I would summarize it as a decade of continued aggressive Federal Reserve involvement in the economy through continued low-interest rates and expansion of its balance sheet.

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The Surprising Benefits of Boredom and Holiday Happiness

Christmas Happiness

With this being the week of Christmas I thought it would be appropriate to revisit one of my favorite topics: Happiness

Bertrand Russell was one of the west’s great intellectuals. He created the field of logical mathematics which led to the creation of the computer and the life-changing work of Alan Turing.

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