Blog Archives

Expectations & Credibility - Lessons for Parents, Leaders, & Managers

Leaders Listening

I must confess that one of my guilty pleasures involves eavesdropping. I find people fascinating, particularly when it comes to learning about what motivates them, what they do, their opinions about issues, and their nuances that make them unique. 

Leaders Lessons Learned Listening

I was recently having breakfast and sitting out on the patio next to a group of four younger guys,

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2020 - Coming in Hot

2020 Coming in Hot

2020 has started off with some geopolitical fireworks that have carried over to financial markets as the headline below attests.

U.S. Kill Iranian Military Leader Qassem Soleimani

This is another good example of why having a hedge with U.S. Treasuries (and maybe a little gold as well) can be helpful to provide a counterweight to risk assets that inevitably take a mild beating,

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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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Turning the Corner to the Way Forward

the Way Forward

I don’t typically find myself drawn to self-help books but after reading an article on Medium I found myself intrigued by one written in 1960 by a plastic surgeon named Maxwell Maltz. It is called Psycho-Cybernetics.

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Looking Back At My 32 Years With CWS And Planning For The Future

Gary Carmell 32 Years with CWS looking forward

July 20, 2019, was my 32nd anniversary at CWS. After college, I moved down to Orange County to be with Roneet to start our lives together. She had recently begun her career at Nordstrom that would be the start of a meteoric rise to upper management over her 10 years there.

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What To Avoid So That Your Happiness Continues

Avoid so Happiness Continues

Following up from last week’s blog post that discussed Bertrand Russell’s Conquest of Happiness, this week will focus on some of the actions we can take and the ways we can train ourselves to welcome more happiness into our lives.

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Bessembinder: A Fascinating But Skewed Study

Bessembinder

In reading @jesse_livermore’s latest and always brilliant missive/analysis, he referenced and linked to a study by Arizona State University professor Hendrik Bessembinder entitled “Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?” It seems like a pretty ludicrous question since our capitalist system is supposed to reward risk-takers.

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Modeling A Recession

recession

Last week were engaged in our annual planning process. As part of this, we come up with key assumptions regarding the operating environment for the next three years or so. Interest rates, of course, are a huge variable in our business and dominated much of the discussion.

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Charlie Munger, Robert Hunter, and Worldly Wisdom

Charlie Munger, Robert Hunter Worldly Wisdom

“What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.”

— Charlie Munger

For me,

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Flow - The 8 Elements of Enjoyment

Flow Enjoyment

For many years I have wanted to read the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience but think I have subconsciously put it off because of the author’s unpronounceable name (at least to me) for fear if someone asked me who wrote it I wouldn’t be able to say his name.

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