Thomas Sowell on Human Capital
One of the most significant passages from Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics: “Even among those who are conventionally called workers or laborers, much of what they contribute to the economy is not labor...
View ArticleHow To Solve 10% Of Life’s Problems
I was recently reading this article on the effectiveness of D.A.R.E. programs nationwide (for those of you not aware, D.A.R.E. stands for “Drug Abuse Resistance Education” and is a nationally run...
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Stocks Get Cheap on Christmas Eve
The typical United States stock lost approximately 20% of its value in December 2018. Technically, we have to go back to the Great Depression to find another example of a December in which stock prices...
View ArticleHow To Save The Newspaper Industry
Somewhere in the basement at my parent’s house, there is a collection of newspapers that marked off important historical events from our family’s worldview. Copies of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the...
View ArticleThree Ways To Ruin Your Financial Life
One of the most powerful ways to think that I picked up from Charlie Munger was this: reverse engineer everything. There are generally two ways to do this: first, you determine the outcome you want,...
View ArticleSome Retirement Advice Is Terrible, Short-Term, and Treats You Like A Yo-Yo
If you received the September 7th copy of The Wall Street Journal, you would have encountered Jason Zweig’s article on the bottom of the first page titled: “Trading Your 401(k) Account: How Bright Can...
View ArticleContrarian Investing in Rural America
By making court appearances on behalf of clients in small towns across Missouri, I have observed that certain businesses have extremely strong footing in each and every small town. People get gas at...
View ArticleThe Secret That Can Carry You Through Your Investing Life
Dividends, plus the passage of time, can make a stock price chart look silly because of the easily understated nature of dividends in the wealth-building process. That’s it. That’s the secret to...
View ArticleYou Have Five Sources Of Power In This World
Every now and then, I like to write “big picture” posts that put my finance articles into the proper perspective of the overall whole. Today, I wanted to talk about the five sources of power that you...
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Investment Advice For A Lifetime
The best investment advice often involves the combination of the following steps: (1) acquire a specialized skill so that your labor generates meaningful money; (2) save some portion of your labor as...
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The BiggerPockets Real Estate Investing Site: Be Careful
I have spent some time recently reading the BiggerPockets investor forum, which is probably the most well-known tool for amateur and new real estate investors to learn about the process and presumably...
View ArticleThe Straight Dope On Diversification
I recently received this comment and question from reader “DB”, and once I saw that my response had crossed the 1,000 word threshold, I decided it was worthy of its own post. The question is about why...
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High Dividends and Growth
What is a reason why stock prices of a particular company falls down lower than historical norms would suggest? One reason is when there is a general feeling in the air that, Amazon, Alphabet, or any...
View ArticleWhy Clubs Charge Cover Charges
This distinction rarely comes up, but the United States’ Prohibition against alcohol between 1920 and 1933 did not actually ban the consumption and possession of alcohol, but rather, the manufacture...
View ArticleMy Three Favorite Businessmen
William Danforth—He founded Purina Mills, the company that would soon become Ralston-Purina, in St. Louis, Missouri, during the summer of 1894. As of the early 2000s, Ralston-Purina is now a part of...
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Benjamin Graham: The Power of Jerry Newman’s Reputation Capital
One of my favorite Benjamin Graham investments to review is his early career investment in the Northern Pipeline. In 1911, the Supreme Court ordered that the Standard Oil Trust be broken into over...
View ArticleFleetwood Mac, Rock ‘N Roll History, and Financial Independence
I’ve spent a lot of time recently studying the history and crazy dynamics behind the members of the rock group Fleetwood Mac—a 1970s supergroup that released the album “Rumours” in 1977, which is the...
View ArticleThe Barrier To Increased Productivity
There are two classes of people don’t get things one. The first class is the lazy, and the second class is the category of people walking around all day with anxiety and talking about how they need to...
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Do You Want A Duck Or A Lifetime Stream Of Income?
I was at Wal-Mart on Thursday when I came across this deer, duck, dog, and bear toilet-paper holders being sold for the price of $24.97. Whipping out my phone, I took this picture to share with y’all:...
View ArticleStan “The Man” Musial, Dividend Stock Investing, And The Inner Drive
Earlier this year, one of the most revered figures in St. Louis history died. If you are from the Midwest, or are a baseball fan of a certain age, you already know the person I’m talking about: Stan...
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