From the turn of the 20th century until just before WWII, Joseph Duveen was the preeminent art dealer in the US. Known for his famous quote — “Europe has a great deal of art; America has a great deal of money” — Duveen was born in England and dropped out of high school to help …
book reviews
Law #13 – Help Me Help You Help Us
Beautiful opening scene to Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart.” Might want to visit Scotland one day. Likely not, but … a thought. Anyhoo, the first few minutes of the film return to 1280 AD. The Scottish king dies without a proper heir, and the nobles and elders of the clans were invited to a meet with King …
Law #12 – Conditional Truths, Salacious Generosity
Al Capone, crook supreme, believed in no one and distrusted everyone. As grandsire of organized crime, Capone laid down with dogs and itched constantly. So when Count Lustig approached Capone at the height of his power, offering to double a $50,000 investment in 60 days, Capone knew it was a con. However. Intrigued, he decided …
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Law #11 – In-dis-pen-SA-BAA-AHHLLoooo
In a piece of almost-forgotten history, a town in the Middle Ages was saved from a foreign aggressor by a mercenary, and the good folks of this small community wanted to reward this exceptional man for his heroic acts. Money? No, could never pay him enough. Honor? No, could never esteem him enough. One bright …
Standard What? Standard Who?
With investing there is a novel little concept called “standard deviation,” and what that means makes no sense to me, so will share with you. Edelman explains it like this (see p. 234): “The standard deviation is the amount of swing in performance that an investment can be expected to have from year to year …
Money Ain’t (E)motion (Best Not Be Re Investing)
The key to success in the stock market? Go long, be boring. The wisest wisdom says to invest/buy into the stock market for the longest possible term, then stay in a little bit longer. Why? ‘Cuz while individual stocks (i.e., companies) might crash/burn, the overall value of the stock market inevitably goes up. Volatility = …
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Tax-Deferred ≠ Tax Denied
Enter: Annuities. In the most basic of the basic sense, an annuity is like an insurance policy to receive tax-deferred payments. Sounds nice, right? Yeah but OF COURSE more complicated than that. For see, to wit … Annuities are offered by insurance companies, basically two types: The real beauty of annuities is that the $$$/investment/money …
Gotta Pay $$$ to Make $$$
One crucial ingredient for the investment portfolio pie? = Mutual funds (see that investment company, ydoncha) The major beauty of mutual funds is the “set it / forget it” aspect BUT but must consider a few things …… #1 being the “annual expense ratio” or AER, the yearly fee (paid by you) to run the …
Easy Access
One friendly aspect of our highly-digitized times is that there are intro apps to the world of investing, which is actually sorta cool. Carbon dating myself a bit here but remember the commercials – “My broker is E.F. Hutton, and E.F. Hutton says …” and everyone would stop what they were doing, ‘cuz he’s about …
Hedge the Hog; or, Lay Low and Spread Wide
Foreign funds: Value of the US Dollar goes ↑?Foreign/int’l currency less valuable bc can buy less with other countries’ monies, more expensive to buy US goods because the dollar buys more. Foreign funds: Value of the US Dollar goes ↓?Foreign/int’l currency more valuable bc can buy more with other countries’ monies, less expensive to buy …
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