I am a firm believer that perception is reality for most people. It’s for this reason that I don’t like to wade into politics because, in the words of Paul Simon, “A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest”. Another way of saying this is that people make up their minds first and then look for reasons to confirm their beliefs and ignore those that contradict them.
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For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.
—Chapter 1, Down the Rabbit Hole
The impact of higher mortgage rates has definitely thrown a wrench into the typical cause-and-effect relationship between rates and home prices.
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The world lost a giant of a man and personality with the passing of Bill Walton last week. He was 71 and his death caught so many people by surprise as he kept his battle with cancer very quiet.
I have written in the past about Walton.
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The Grateful Dead have a song called The Eleven. In many ways the lyrics are unintelligible. It was written during their psychedelic phase so the lack of comprehension makes some sense as their senses were non-sensical.
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It’s always good to reflect as a year comes to a close and a new one begins. Professionally, 2023 was extremely challenging (and humbling). Our beautiful hedge capping most of our variable rate loans at 1.25% for 30-day LIBOR, when it was still in existence,
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Perhaps Powell’s pivot was highly influenced by having access to the Fed’s favorite inflation indicator, the Personal Consumption Expenditure Index (PCE), well ahead of its official release last Friday. As this headline from the Wall Street Journal shows, the index went into negative territory,
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Powell did it for the third time. He proved for the third time that you should listen to him carefully until he does something completely different, and then you should listen to him again. After raising rates aggressively starting in April 2022, after he had said that the Fed wouldn’t raise rates until the end of 2023 at the earliest,
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In the wake of last Friday’s jobs report, Treasuries sold off, and yields rose, as this table shows.
Once again, there was a material difference between the ADP report, which came in weaker than expected,
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The world lost an intellectual and investing giant with the passing of Charlie Munger. He was due to turn 100 on January 1st. He passed away rather quietly and surprisingly for someone with such a large personality and admittedly big mouth.
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I remember reading the 20th-anniversary edition of Rolling Stone magazine in 1987. There were numerous interviews with some of the greats of rock and roll who had been performing for most, if not all, of those 20 years. The one common theme I picked up was that when they started playing music and getting paid for it,
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