I’ve noticed some interesting things about ideas. Often the old ideas are the best ideas and occasionally old ideas are made new again. If you follow business and technology, you know that over the last couple of years the business model that seems to be catching everyone’s imagination goes under the label of “peer-to-peer.” Let’s take Airbnb to illustrate this. Airbnb is basically a service that connects people who have lodging to offer to people who need lodging. Uber and Lyft do the same thing with people who have transportation to offer and people who need...
A lot of investors were quite happy to wave good-bye to 2015. It was a confusing and unpredictable year for a wide array of traditional investments. The Dow Jones Industrial average closed down 2.2 percent for the year as revelers were putting on their party hats on New Year’s Eve. By itself that news is bad enough, but it’s even worse when you put it in light of one of the most dependable stock market trends – the fact that the market usually goes up quite dramatically in years preceding presidential elections. However, this time around, that didn’t happen and...
Every time we roll into a new year, the financial experts start looking into their crystal balls and make predictions about which investments will go up in price and which are likely to go down. I’m not going to sugar coat this, but the outlook for traditional investment instruments in 2016 looks gloomy. An Associated Press roundup of opinions on the CNBC website carried the headline, “Expect less and buy antacid: 2016 investment forecasts.” The article detailed how U.S. stocks, foreign stocks, and bonds were all likely to be dogs in 2016. I’ve scanned several...
Have you ever been stereotyped? We all hate it, don’t you agree? We hate it because people take one thing they know about us and then make all kinds of wrong assumptions about who we are and how we think. Our country has been fighting a battle against stereotyping people for many years and while we probably have a long way to go, I think we’ve made some progress. In many ways, I believe that when we stereotype people, we’re being lazy. It’s much easier to find out one thing about a person and then jump to a long list of conclusions, than it is to actually get to...
