Clients Corner

“The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.”
—Warren Buffett
With that bit of wisdom from the sage
of Omaha ringing in our ears, let us consider some findings from a recently completed study

In the first seventy days of this year, there occurred—in no particular order—the following: •  The U.S. military extracted the President of Venezuela from his palace; he is currently being held in Brooklyn. •  The President of the United States broached, with apparent seriousness, the possibility of acquiring Greenland...

In a lifetime of investing, the essential question is “What is risk?” And an awful lot of people go wrong assuming that there are only two states in which their money may be found at any given moment.

Just the other day, I was at a lovely club in downtown Jacksonville, Florida, waiting to speak at a luncheon meeting of about a hundred financial advisors.

Dividends are the Rodney Dangerfield of equity investing: they don’t get no respect at all. On the surface, this may be somewhat understandable. After all, dividend yields aren’t anything to talk about. 

One of the foremost investors of modern times—whose thoughtful memos have become required reading in the financial community is a gentleman named Howard Marks.

With the impending retirement of Warren Buffett as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, the most recognized
and respected CEO in American business may be Jamie
Dimon of JPMorgan Chase.

I begin by suggesting a hypothesis, to wit: The enduring values of consistently successful businesses are one thing, and the prices of those companies’ stocks on any given day are another thing. 

The roughly hundred-year return of company common stocks in the United State —assuming dividends were left to compound—has been about 10% per year. 

The 1970's were am economic, financial, political and geopolitical disaster for the United States. Under relentless inflationary pressures, President Nixon had been forced to abandon the gold standard in August 1971.

Around this time in 1992, a hitherto unknown political strategist was working hard to get his client, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, elected president.

The essay you're reading was drafted on Sunday night, April 20.
That’s about par for the course: these little missives that
your financial advisor sends along to you are usually prepared about ten days prior to the end of a month.

From a new high on February 19, the Standard & Poor’s
500-Stock Index dropped ten percent in said three weeks,
into what financial media love to call “correction territory.”

As noted often in the past, the financial advisor
who sends you these essays from time to time has access to
them because they’re a subscriber to my newsletter for investment professionals.

Consider the possibility that your financial outcome in
2025 (and well beyond) will depend to a very great extent
on which one you are. So now would be a great time to
make a conscious choice.

The year 2024 was replete with utterly astonishing surprises—both positive and negative—that seemed to come out of nowhere. Like every other year.