Quarterly Review
Q1 2026 Review: Is it Time to Worry?
There is a lot to worry about. War in Iran, artificial intelligence, inflation, high stock valuations, and the potential liquidity crisis in “alternative” investments. It’s enough to keep anybody up at night (and if you are up, give us a call, because we are probably up taking care of one of our kids!). Yet the…
Q4 2025 Review: Bubble, Cycle, Value
The world moves in cycles. Some are predictable like the seasons or the tides. When it involves people, cycles are just as inevitable but much less predictable. Whether it’s the business cycle of booms and busts or the investment cycle favoring growth or value, each iteration is different. All cycles include periods of great optimism…
Q3 2025 Review: Trust
At Berkshire Hathaway’s 2024 annual meeting, Warren Buffett was asked if he would change anything about his life. For someone who has long managed Berkshire well beyond financial necessity, his reply struck a chord: “I really enjoy managing money for people who trust me…I just like the feeling of being trusted.” We’ve spoken directly with…
Q2 2025 Review: Honeybee
On May 3rd Warren Buffett announced he was stepping down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. It wasn’t the first time Buffett stepped away. In 1969, he closed his partnership, writing: “Quite frankly, I would continue to operate… …However, I just don’t see anything available that gives any reasonable hope…and I have no desire to grope…
Q1 2025 Review: Defying Gravity
They say that Michael Jordan’s “hang time” was only .9 seconds, but through technique, body control and timing, it looked like he could fly. The Bar-tailed Godwit is a bird whose migration patten spans 8,000 miles nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand, burning half its body weight in the 9-day flight. When a child “accidentally”…
Q4 2024 Review: The Other Revolution
In our last newsletter we wrote about the impending political revolution, but 2024 was defined by a different revolution: Artificial Intelligence. At least that’s what the stock market suggests. The seven largest companies (Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Tesla and Google) now represent 33% of the S&P 500. This compares to 22% during the internet…
Q3 2024 Review: Maybe The Market Does Care?
Maybe the market does care? Out of nowhere, the broader market “woke up” and decided there were a whole lot of compelling investments that had little to do with AI. For the first time this year, the average S&P 500 stock outperformed the market cap weighted index, going up 9%, or almost double. Many of…
Q2 2024 Review: Sometimes the Market Just Doesn’t Care
Sometimes the market just doesn’t care. All the air gets sucked up by a mega trend, and everything else gets overshadowed. Investors can chase the trend, or they can focus on the opportunities hiding in the shadows. Air Products & Chemicals is the third largest industrial gas company in the world, supplying hydrogen, oxygen and…
Q1 2024 Compass Review: Two Sides of a Coin
In Warren Buffet’s latest annual Berkshire Hathway letter, he wrote, “For whatever reasons, markets now exhibit far more casino-like behavior than they did when I was young. The casino now resides in many homes and daily tempts the occupants. One fact of financial life should never be forgotten. Wall Street – to use the term…
Q4 2023 Compass Review: Time
The cornerstone of investing is the tradeoff between interest and time. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow because you can earn interest on that dollar. When interest is zero, time matters less. When time matters less, you take more risk to grow your assets. The most important consequence of higher interest…
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