Substack Library
GlossaryMy Geography Lesson
February 20, 2022We grow mostly by word of mouth and a bigger community creates more robust dialogue, so feel free to forward widely!
Things Fall Apart
February 13, 2022It’s easy to be lulled into a sense that lessons once painfully learned, sometimes over hundreds of years—like the value of stable borders or rules limiting a leader’s power—are now accepted wisdom. I spent part of last week in Turkish-controlled Cyprus, a place that serves as a reminder of what happens when this wisdom is lost.
The Physics of Story
February 6, 2022I like a good framework. For instance, an equity (a stock) has just two moving parts, earnings and the price paid for those earnings. Earnings, in turn, are spending. A framework puts individual observations, like the price investors are willing to pay to own a company’s earnings, into logical context.
Tightening and War
January 30, 2022There are times when it is easier to make money investing and times when it is harder; this is a time when it is harder. Investors (savers) need to simultaneously navigate a) less Fed money printing and b) a potential war—while not losing sight of the big picture, which is a transformative wave of innovation.
The Tide Goes Out
January 23, 2022If the rest of 2022 looks like January, most savers are in for some pain. Asset prices (stock indexes and bonds) are down and inflation is up. In real terms (after inflation), the typical saver has a lot less money, like about 8% less just this month. If this continues for the next six months … that is a meaningful decline in real wealth.
Jail Break
January 16, 2022The tricky thing about investing is there are no fixed truths. There is common sense—buy low, sell high—but the game shifts because we shift. The market is people and our attitudes toward saving evolve, particularly after ruptures like depressions, wars and pandemics. This is evident in the “big quit;” millions of people suddenly leaving their salaried jobs, myself among them.
A Sunday Off
January 9, 2022As noted in my New Year’s Day post, I took this week off from writing a longer essay and will return Sunday, 16 January. We are hard at work lining up and recording guests for Season #4 of our podcast, figuring out an interactive graphic to help you keep score of your money and editing, editing, editing book #2, tentatively called Mister, Minion. If you have questions about any of this, reach out.
The Stories We Tell
December 26, 2021We are wired for story. Stories can be conveyed in a cave painting, from the pulpit, a book or a podcast. Story is the way we share meaning and truth. Today’s post is about key lessons that emerged from Season #3 of the Things I Didn’t Learn in School podcast.