Weekly Memo

A Pause for Presence

I’ll never forget the magic show that I went to, and got to participate in.  The magician had a large jar filled with jellybeans. The challenge was to figure out how many jellybeans were in the jar.  He chose 5 people from the audience and asked each of us to

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Today’s Ups and Downs Won’t Define Your Future

In October 1994 Peter Lynch gave a commentary about the markets: “The markets will go up and the markets will go down.  Human nature hasn’t changed much in 25,000 years. Some events will come out of left field and the market will go down or the market will go up.  

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AI in finance

AI: It’s All Fun and Games Till Someone Gets Hacked

Joanna Stone, from the Wall Street Journal, created an avatar of herself and challenged her clone to replace her for 24 hours. That sounds great! Why not have a bot do your job while you sleep in, have a self care day and walk your dog?(1)   It’s all fun and

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Scary Times

This was the view from my house on Halloween Day.  It was a scary day.  Some neighbors were evacuated and then returned home in the early evening. In the end, six homes had damage and no one was hurt. As the electricity went out and the fire crews went up and down the

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Unsubscribe? Good Luck with That!

  For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to cancel a subscription, and it was not easy!  An unsubscribe button didn’t exist.  The search bar took me to unhelpful articles. After a fair number of searches, I finally unburied a phone number where I had to call in to

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Labor Day Musings

  In 1939, in Kansas, wheat mills owners realized that women were using their sacks to make clothes for their children. The mills started using flowered fabric for their sacks so that kids would have pretty clothes and the label would wash out. (1) It was a gesture of pure

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Peter Buffet’s Lesson on Wealth

In 1977 at the age of 19, Peter Buffet received a $90K inheritance from the sale of his grandfather’s farm.  Warren Buffet was clear in telling his kids that he’d give them “enough so they can do anything but not enough so they can do nothing.” (1) The $90K would be the

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The August Flash Crash

In August we had a “Flash Crash” – a sudden and significant drop in the value of the market followed by a quick recovery.   On August 5, 2024, the S&P 500 index fell by approximately 3%1. Despite the initial shock, the market bounced back quickly. By the end of August,

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How Can We Predict the Future?

Like you, I’m seeing a lot of predictions: Polls are predicting Trump will be the next president. Polls are predicting Harris will be the next president. The economy is headed for a recession. The economy is doing well. Inflation is slowing. Inflation is still bad. There are predictions that the

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Are You Missing Out? Check for Unclaimed Funds Today!

    Have you ever lost money? Not in the markets, but actual checks or other cash equivalents? How can you even know? The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA) claims that 1 in 7 people have unclaimed property. They return over $4 Billion to states each year! Let’s

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