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November 12, 2020
Anytime you make a frivolous splurge purchase – dining out, buying a pair of shoes, or even something as small as buying name-brand cereal rather than the generic- force yourself to automatically sock away an equal amount into a rainy-day savings account. This has a few advantages: It makes the associations with saving less painful; it effectively doubles the price of the splurge, thereby inducing a little more caution before the spending; and it creates an easy way to track how much you’re spending on frivolous things since the size of your emergency savings will mirror the amount of frivolous spending. -Jonathan Bogard, PH.D.candidate at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Los Angeles
November 3, 2020
It was not a great week for Jack Dorsey, the head of both Square and Twitter. First, the tech titan was summoned to Washington to answer questions about the influence of social media and the way information is parsed out to the country. As he weirdly channeled the Duck Dynasty in appearance, he took heated questions about Twitter’s content moderation. Then later in the week, Wall Street had a chance to weigh in on the quarterly reports from Jack’s two companies. Unfortunately, Twitter was down over 20% and Square dropped about 9%. Shed no tears for Jack though, both stocks are higher for the year, with Square more than doubling. More importantly, the long-term outcomes for companies that are paraded before Congress, has many times been very positive. Nothing like a good monopoly or access and influence to 145 million people. Bucks unlimited.
October 1, 2020
During the break from standard life during the coronavirus, many of us have realized that the way we acted in the pre-coronavirus time did not necessarily maximize our happiness. I, for example, realized that I am able to cook some simple dishes and that I actually enjoy it. So take the things that you now realize you used to spend money on but that did not give you much joy in life (such as eating out regularly) and moving forward you don’t go back to those old spending habits. -Dan Ariely, James B. Duke professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, Durham, N.C.
August 31, 2020
As the country experiences the pain of the Covid-19 pandemic and the violence surrounding social unrest, the stock market has found love. Since the intra-day lows on March 23rd, the passion for stocks has burst during the summer months. Here are the stats, the Dow and S&P are up about 50% from their lows and the Nasdaq has incredibly risen over 60%. August 2020 looks to be the best August month since 1984, when Elon Musk was 13 years old and dreaming about rockets. Even with the economy rocking at the start of the year, investors would have been hard pressed to pick this type of love affair for equities. The advance in stocks is like wow man…
July 16, 2020
I have a friend, yeah that’s it, a friend, who was very grateful for the occasional pass-fail course in higher education that helped make that term. We are in the middle of what could be called the “Pass Fail” market. The stock market, with almost half of the S&P 500 now not offering earnings guidance, is in a sort of financial no-man’s land. With the cover of sales and revenue unknowns combined with the universal blame of Covid-19, the coming quarterly reports will feel more like a beauty pageant than a fundamental deep dive. Hold on, because the markets might be heading on a road trip to volatility.
