By: Laura Walton AFC® A recent radio ad for Cash Call Mortgage exclaimed “Your house is your bank!” Have we learned nothing? Investing in stocks is inherently risky; the same goes for real estate. Values boom and bust and then we quickly forget. To help us remember, here’s a quote from the second quarter of…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Everett Dirksen, Senate Minority leader in the 60’s, is noted as saying, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money.” Take off a few zeros and the same is true for you and me. When I’m working with a client to create their net worth statement, they…
By: Laura Walton AFC® The saying’s origin is disputed. With a history of invasion, starvation and mass emigration, some say it mocks Ireland’s history of adversity. Or it may go back to California Gold Rush days when many fortunes were made by miners who happened to be Irish. It may have been a derogatory term…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Definition: To expose flaws in a current business model, highlight areas where improvement or changes are needed, and to help inspire adaptation of the business model for future growth…or what Bezos, Dimon and Buffett are bringing to the healthcare market. Representing Amazon, JP Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, these three individuals are…
I admire Warren Buffett as much for his manner of speech as for his investing prowess. Below I’ve pulled some commonsense quotes from his just released 2017 Berkshire Hathaway Annual letter – enjoy! Buffett’s view on debt, which could apply to any of us: “Our aversion to leverage (debt) has dampened our returns over the years but we…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Gender Lens Investing? Should I admit that I didn’t know it was a thing? Interest in Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), which, for example, might exclude tobacco companies from your portfolio, has been growing along with investing based on environmental, social and governance factors (ESG investing). Gender Lens Investing takes those ideas…
By: Laura Walton AFC® “Managing money is the most profitable business in the United States.” Jason Zweig pulled this quote for his recent Wall Street Journal article from a 1996 speech made by Arthur Zeikel, then president of Merrill Lynch Asset Management. Zweig’s article, “Financiers, Heal Thyselves,” applauds the recently announced pact by Jeffrey Bezos (Amazon), Warren Buffett…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Hyperbole – synonyms: exaggeration, overstatement, magnification, embroidery, embellishment, excess, overkill. There’s been a lot of hyperbole in the financial news the last few days – below are some examples I culled from news stories: a big whoosh lower massive selling the Dow plummeted two huge sell-offs in a row stop the…
By: Laura Walton AFC® That’s what I said to the radio yesterday morning. In response to the government shutdown, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey was asked the question “how with this affect you?” and, to my dismay, he said “I can’t miss a house payment. If I miss a paycheck, I don’t have reserves to…
By: Laura Walton AFC® We talk about life balance, a balanced diet, balancing work and play, the balance of nature. Now’s an important time to talk about balance and our investments. All too often investor behavior hurts us when making buying and selling decisions. We get excited and buy when we see a stock’s value rising…