In what can only be described as a major shift in US monetary policy, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced late last week that the Fed will no longer attempt to keep inflation consistently at 2%. Instead they will attempt to hold inflation rates to an average of 2% over [...]
If you have been to any retail store in the past few months you have probably noticed a sign on the cash register that says something like “due to coin shortage exact change required” or “cash not accepted due to coin shortage” When I first saw one of these signs [...]
Amazon recently announced its plan to acquire many vacant Sears and J.C. Penney department stores in malls across America to use as distribution centers to assist in speeding up product deliveries to suburban customers. While not publicly announcing this, it would not surprise me if part of this strategy will [...]
One of the skills required to beating the stock market is having the vision to see what will likely happen next and not to focus on what already has. Generally, current market performance reflects what investors believe market conditions will look like six months from now. One of my favorite [...]
2020 has certainly been one for the history books. It seems like in all aspects of society we are more divided than ever before. Recently, this divide has manifested itself in silly debates about masks, garage pull-ropes, Russian Facebook ads, flag etiquette, and statues of Columbus. While many of these [...]
When discussing the first half of 2020, the description I hear most is Unbelievable! There are few still living who have any recollection of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. The other pandemics in the past 70 years were not met with the same hysteria. These included those of 1957 and 1968. [...]
Pat Farrell, Owner of Sibley Orchards, once told me “The more you talk with people of different viewpoints, the clearer your own perspective becomes.” That simple statement has carried with me and seems to be very appropriate for the times we are living in right now. In our current information [...]
Has the whole world gone crazy? Are you and I the only sane people left? It’s hard to turn on the news without either wanting to curl up in the fetal position or smashing it with the nearest heavy object. We find ourselves in an argumentative world that shows no [...]
The two conditions are usually unrelated. Mr. Market is concerned most with the question of whether, in 6 to 12 months in the future, economic conditions will be better or worse. More specifically, an investor continuously makes a judgment about the probable progress of individual companies, industries, and the economy, [...]
Several months ago, when Covid-19 was first starting to spread domestically, I wrote a column about the importance of having a plan in place should the virus get really bad here in the area. In all of my planning, the one thing I didn’t think to do was get a [...]
