Blog Archives

Long-Term Investors and The Value of Illiquidity

long-term investors

One of the great advantages and pleasures of being with a company that was founded in 1969 is the tremendous number of long-term investors we have and the wonderful relationships formed over the years.

The downside is that aging is inevitable and an increasing number are passing away.

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Inflation - Temporary Peak or Just Starting?

inflation

Inflation is clearly one of the hottest topics for investors in particular and society more generally as the following chart shows. Core inflation has not moved commensurately with the exploding interest in the topic.

Inflation is going to be the HOTTEST topic of Q2 and Q3

The following charts show why inflation is such a hot topic.

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Basketball Masters and The Infinite Game

Basketball

I’ve written many times over the years regarding my interest in the subject of mastery. I have great admiration for people who go deep into their craft and come to know it so well that they continuously find an edge to enable them to be successful over the long term and be able to persevere through the inevitable adversities that life throws our way.

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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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Lumbering in Pain

Lumber

Although CWS is largely an owner/operator of apartment communities, we have been developing new communities for over 25 years. Approximately 15% of our portfolio consists of properties we have developed. Given the large amount of capital looking to own apartments and the compression in cap rates,

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A Muddled Approach to Guesstimating Libor's Next Peak

LIBOR Guesstimating Libor's Next Peak

Although I’m in the camp that the Fed will stick to its word and not raise short-term interest rates until after 2023 at the earliest, the market is betting differently. Rather than focusing on when the Fed will start raising rates, let’s assume that they will.

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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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Lessons from Columbo

Columbo Schitt's Creek

Not surprisingly, one of the ways of occupying my time while recovering from my heart surgery has been to dive into all of the different content options on the streaming services. Despite the myriad of choices, I have found very little to watch and that is really more particular to me in that I have a hard time starting a series and being committed to finishing it.

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How to Identify and Leverage Your Munger Moment

This week I revisit one of my favorite concepts discussed in the book: The Munger Moment. The video discusses what I mean by this. For those of you who either prefer to read about the concept or have the video amplified by the key points, here you go.

What is a Munger Moment

  • ‘Munger Moments’ are those rare opportunities when the odds align strongly in our favor and all we need are the resources and courage to take advantage of them.

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