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Mind Your Legacy and a Pet Peeve

Mark Hurd Legacy

I was going to write about some interesting charts that caught my attention such as this one.

Average of five key Philly Fed subindexes

And while this divergence definitely caught my eye and makes me wonder if the recent rise in yields (nearly 0.25% over the last couple of weeks on the 10-Year Treasury) is foreshadowing economic improvement like this chart seems to suggest,

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A Reunion of Reflection

Central School 8th Grade Class of 1979

This post will be a little self-indulgent, as it will not touch on anything related to real estate, interest rates, or economics. It is inspired by my recent attendance at the 40th reunion of my eighth-grade class.

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Sickness, Grit, Reliability, and Variable Rate Loans

mental toughness

Roneet used to say that you have to be healthy in order to be sick. She was spot on. I, fortunately, don’t get sick very much but last week was one in which I was fighting my annual cold. It usually lasts five to seven days and then I’m back to good health.

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Find a Game and Get in the Game

Failure to Launch or Find Yourself

I was talking to my daughter about a few college graduates that seem to me as if they fall into the category of “failure to launch”. Well, maybe they have launched but they have not reached escape velocity to reach an orbit of independence (and I don’t just mean financially) and growth.

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Benefits of Philanthropy - Give it Away Now..or Later

Carnegie Hall

I was in New York City in 2015 and stayed near Carnegie Hall which is fitting since I wrote about Andrew Carnegie last week and plan to continue with discussing him again this week. Carnegie Hall is one of the great legacies he left behind.

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Kevin Durant and the Power of Grudges and Adversity

A lot of people have become quite successful from a career and financial perspective by seeming to always have a chip on their shoulder. There was some slight, insecurity, or need for total dominance that feeds the creation of enemies to fuel their drive and success. I have been listening to Michael Ovitz’s autobiography on Audible and this was clearly the case for him as his goal at CAA was total domination of the agency industry.

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The Media, Earthquakes, and Market Crashes

Market-Crashes

I have written before about how investors overestimate the probability of extreme negative outcomes. The author of the study I referenced in that blog post has teamed up with his famed Yale colleague Robert Shiller and another professor and published a new working paper called Crash Beliefs from Investor Surveys.

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Never Stop Questioning

Never Stop Questioning Gary Carmell

It was my great pleasure and honor to attend my daughter’s high school graduation last week. It was such a beautiful and moving ceremony and a tremendous accomplishment for her. She truly gave blood, sweat, and tears to get to this point. The ceremony was steeped in tradition as she graduated from a girls school that was founded in 1889.

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German Negativity

German Yield

Mohamed El-Erian, the former CEO of PIMCO, said recently on CNBC that if you want to know what’s going to happen to U.S. long-term interest rates, then all you have to do is look to Germany. And so that is what I did.

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Fire My Metaphor for Earnings News: Catalytic Regeneration

Canyon Fire earnings news

There’s a regional park near my house that I like to hike. It has beautiful scenery, a lot of hills, and a number of people on the trails that conveys a feeling of community and self-care. Its topography and large size allow for many different trail options in terms of length,

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