Modern Convention

I’ve been trying to avoid writing about the current state of America's national political affairs.  I feel like I’ve done that; even though this is a general election year and there’s a lot of crazy going on, particularly in the Republican Party, I only made one entry six months ago, around Iowa caucus time.

However, now that both national party conventions just ended, I have to at least write something about them.

So much of what you see and hear in the primary and convention season is coming from the party goofballs.  By that I mean, local political activists on the fringes who attend obscure rallies, and who will always follow the party line, no matter how extreme it is.

While these particular Democrats and Republicans usually have opinions that are very black-and-white (along with skin color), electing a president isn't a strict matter of pro-gun versus pro-gun control, or pro-business versus pro-middle class, or pro-religion versus pro-scientific fact-secular.  It's important to keep that in perspective.

It's been a fact for a long time that to win a general election, a candidate must appeal to the more centrist general electorate.  This is where the more centrist party figures are, and they don't attend the national conventions.

The centrist electorate is also where the political independents have the power.  That's folks like me.  But independents aren't invited on the crazy-town major party national convention train, either.

And so, the conventions come and go with no one really caring about those who don't think as they do, and no one asking for the help they ultimately need.  It's an unfortunate and frankly dumb way to go about nominating a person for president.

It's too bad there isn't a bona fide independent party.  And no, Libertarian Party, you're still too 'out-there' to qualify as a party of independents, although by being fiscally conservative and socially liberal, you're closer than the others.

Letter To My Younger Self

Earlier this week, recently retired basketball star Kobe Bryant made a minor news ripple by posting a letter to his younger self.  He wrote about investing in other people, rather than just giving them things to make them feel good.

I didn't care so much for the letter as I did for the idea.  In his case, he was writing to his 17-year-old self, the point at which went from high school straight to his professional basketball career.  So here's a letter to my 22-year-old self, when I went from high school to the working world:

Dear Younger Me,

Now that you’ve got the new degree, new job, new apartment, and new wife, you probably think you’ve got the world by the tail.  I’m happy to tell you that for the most part, you do, relative to most people your age.  That’s also true relative to the rest of the world – and that’s what I want to write you about.

Things have been teed up for you pretty well your whole life.  For sure, it wasn’t exactly given to you; you had to work a lot on the farm as a teenager (at a time when most kids your age were doing next to nothing), and you had to spend almost everything you earned by paying for college (although that no-interest loan from your parents made a big difference).   But you did not want for much.

It turns out that there are millions of people in America, and millions more in the world, that didn’t have the opportunity you had to get to where you are.  Your idea of what’s righteous isn’t the same elsewhere.  Unfortunately, you won’t realize this for many years.

It’s going to take at least that long to mentally escape the ultra-conservative, white-bred geographic area and culture from which you came.  In a way, it’s just like your dad told you:  There are a lot of jerks ‘out there’ – but it turns out, you may be someone else’s ‘out there.’

You don’t know this yet, but being an upper-middle-class, white male in America is as cushy as it gets.  Since you’ve never been anywhere that wasn’t dominated by upper-middle-class white males, you will tend to think that’s how the world works.

Don’t do that.  You’ll eventually figure it out, but unfortunately, a lot of folks won’t.  They’ll always think their own version of society should be the same everywhere, which was a problem thirty years before you were born, and will be a problem over your next thirty years as well.  It’s still called bigotry.

So listen to me now and believe me not too much later, you started the marathon at the 15-mile mark.  There’s still a long way to go, but it could be worse for you, and it is worse for plenty of others.  Be more thoughtful and understanding, and teach your kids to do the same.

Most importantly, don’t believe everything you hear, especially from something that you’ll later refer to as the ‘internet.’  Think for yourself.  Find out for yourself.  Decide for yourself.  This lesson will come in very handy in your professional life, too.

Any by the way, please pay more attention to the lyrics of songs, not just the rhythm.  You’ll thank me later.  Also, you might want to reconsider being a Vikings fan.

Best Regards,

Older Me

Best Song Lyrics (Part XVIII)

I've been listening to a lot more music in the past year or so.  Part of it is because I've started to use headphones (at a low volume level) while biking.  Another reason is because I've had access to a couple of temporary subscriptions to satellite radio, with it vast number of specialty channels.

Regardless, I've heard a lot of old songs that remind me how good music can be.  One artist that I've been listening to more, and only recently gained an appreciation of, is Bob Seger.

It doesn't matter if it's a solo song or more likely with his famous Silver Bullet Band, Seger has a great library of stuff.  Some of it may have gained excessive popularity from a movie (Old Time Rock and Roll from Risky Business) or from a commercial (Like A Rock from Chevy).  However, other stuff probably deserved more popularity than it got.

As an example of his many great songs with great lyrics, I give you one about a romantic proposition between lonely friends, We've Got Tonight.

I know it's late, I know you're weary
I know your plans don't include me
Still here we are, both of us lonely
Longing for shelter from all that we see
Why should we worry, no one will care girl
Look at the stars so far away
We've got tonight, who needs tomorrow?
We've got tonight babe
Why don't you stay?

Deep in my soul, I've been so lonely
All of my hopes, fading away
I've longed for love, like everyone else does
I know I'll keep searching, even after today
So there it is girl, I've said it all now
And here we are babe, what do you say?
We've got tonight, who needs tomorrow?
We've got tonight babe
Why don't you stay?

The View From My Back Deck

It's a beautiful evening, not hot, not cold, and importantly, not buggy.  It's an unusually good summer evening to sit on my back deck with a beverage and some music, and take a look around.

First I see my neighbor to the east.  She’s been widowed for years now.  She’s out doing yard work, which she seemed to have enjoyed a lot more 10 years ago, but not so much now that she’s around 80 years old.  A few weeks ago, she told me she recently retired, and was spending more time with her great-grandchildren.   Unfortunately, she doesn’t get to spend as much time with them as she wants, because now she has a houseful to help take care of, too.  That’s because in the past year, she’s allowed four people to move in with her:  Her partially disabled, adult son (or brother, not sure); her grandson’s mother-in-law, who is effectively renting her basement for $100 a month; and now her adult granddaughter and the granddaughter’s boyfriend.  Let’s just say, this neighbor has some people taking advantage of her Iowa Nice.

Now I see the adult granddaughter and the boyfriend.   They walked out to check the mail, although it isn’t clear why that task needed both of them.  Maybe they were on one of their outdoor smoke breaks?  My neighbor allowed them to move in with her a few months ago – even though she doesn’t approve of them living together.  She told me she’s hoping to ”straighten out” the girl, implying social/legal problems in the past.   Since the couple has lived there, there has been no sign they’re working, they clearly have no ambition to help with any yard work, and their dog disappeared (or more likely, ran away from them).   Clearly, there is a lot of straightening out still to be done.

Now I see my neighbors to the northeast.  He and his wife, daughter, and daughter’s boyfriend are just returning from an afternoon of boating.  They have a nice boat they keep at home, and they’re very good about getting out with it in the summer.   He runs his own business out of his garage, has some nice toys (like the boat) and keeps a clean property, although in 15 years I’ve never seen his wife or daughter do any of the work on said property.  The daughter is a bit of a wild child, and although she’s still in high school, he’s mentioned that he’s ready for her to move out.  We’ve heard shouting matches many times over the years, although on this evening, like the weather, it’s calm.

Now I see the wife carrying their old, grungy-looking dog outside and setting it on the front lawn.  This is her version of walking the dog.  It’s been this way for years, probably since the month after they got the dog, after ‘new puppy’ syndrome wore off.  Within a minute, the dog poops basically in the same spot where it was set down, and hobbles back to the front door to be let in again.  Every year, this makes for an interesting patchwork of deep green grass next to the lighter greens and brown parts of the lawn.  Of course, the whole thing is pathetic – and I mean both the dog and the way it’s treated.  Good grief, why do people keep dogs that they don’t want to care for properly?

No time to worry about that now.  It's still a beautiful evening, and only a few minutes have passed.  Time to enjoy the simple pleasures of my more uncomplicated life.

Saving Investors From Themselves

One of the smartest financial journalists I follow is Jason Zweig.  He isn't a media darling, but he's fairly well-known for writing a column for the Wall Street Journal, and he's also authored books and operates his own web / blogging site at jasonzweig.com.

I was looking at his blog archive recently, and came across a gem from three years ago called, "Saving Investors From Themselves."  He's writing about financial journalists, but he could just as well be writing about financial advisors.

Here's an excerpt -- if you don't want to read it all, at least read the last sentence.

I was once asked, at a journalism conference, how I defined my job.  I said:  My job is to write the exact same thing between 50 and 100 times a year in such a way that neither my editors nor my readers will ever think I am repeating myself.

That’s because good advice rarely changes, while markets change constantly.  The temptation to pander is almost irresistible.  And while people need good advice, what they want is advice that sounds good.

In practice, for most of the media, that requires telling people to buy Internet stocks in 1999 and early 2000; explaining, in 2005 and 2006, how to “flip” houses; in 2008 and 2009, it meant telling people to dump their stocks and even to buy “leveraged inverse” exchange-traded funds that made explosively risky bets against stocks; and ever since 2008, it has meant touting bonds and the “safety trade” like high-dividend-paying stocks and so-called minimum-volatility stocks.

It’s no wonder that, as brilliant research by the psychologist Paul Andreassen showed many years ago, people who receive frequent news updates on their investments earn lower returns than those who get no news.  It’s also no wonder that the media has ignored those findings.  Not many people care to admit that they spend their careers being part of the problem instead of trying to be part of the solution.

My job, as I see it, is to learn from other people’s mistakes and from my own.  Above all, it means trying to save people from themselves.  As the founder of security analysis, Benjamin Graham, wrote in The Intelligent Investor in 1949: “The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.”

From financial history and from my own experience, I long ago concluded that regression to the mean is the most powerful law in financial physics:  Periods of above-average performance are inevitably followed by below-average returns, and bad times inevitably set the stage for surprisingly good performance.

But humans perceive reality in short bursts and streaks, making a long-term perspective almost impossible to sustain – and making most people prone to believing that every blip is the beginning of a durable opportunity.

My role, therefore, is to bet on regression to the mean even as most investors, and financial journalists, are betting against it.  I try to talk readers out of chasing whatever is hot and, instead, to think about investing in what is not hot.  Instead of pandering to investors’ own worst tendencies,  I try to push back.  My role is also to remind them constantly that knowing what not to do is much more important than what to do.  Approximately 99% of the time, the single most important thing investors should do is absolutely nothing.

Dear Graduating Class of 2016

So ends another school year, and so begins another attempt at imparting wisdom upon this year’s graduates.  In the past, I’ve sometimes had messages for both high school and college graduates.   I’m going to ignore the scholastic grads this year, maybe from this point forward.  18-year-olds are so brainwashed from living in the same social-political-economic environment their whole lives, I don’t see how they can process an outsider’s advice anyway, much less execute it.  But college grads – they have no excuse.

So to the college graduates of 2016:

Let me start by saying that I’m withholding my congratulations.  Oh sure, you may have done enough to get your degree, but what’s the accomplishment in that?  I've previously chided the act of celebrating high school diplomas, and as for you, was there ever a doubt that with enough time and money, you would eventually graduate?

Let’s get real.  With apologies to the rocket scientists out there, getting a college degree isn’t rocket science.  Heck, you didn’t even need to GO to college to get a degree.  Thanks to technology, not to mention lower standards, you can get a degree on-line for the most part.  If it was going to take a massive effort to get degree, you probably wouldn’t have gone to college in the first place.

As for what's next, like I've said to your predecessors, if you haven't figured that out yet, you've already made your first real-life screw up.  That's what the last 4 or 5 or 5+ years were for.  If that's you, then you're probably headed back to live in your all-too-willing parents' basement for an undisclosed period of time.  So much for repeating my best advice from last year to “go out there and try to never move back in with your parents!"

However, regardless of whether you are unemployed and living with your parents, or you are planning to travel the world and live day-by-day, or you actually have a job, there are still important things you now must do.  Be responsible.  Be accountable.  Be socially aware.  Have an opinion.  Have a sense of humor.  Improve yourself.  Positively influence those around you.

Most of all, figure out a way to contribute to the betterment of society -- it's not so hard.  For some of you that might mean staying in your parents basement, so if that's what you were going for, it all worked out.

Berky Meeting Nuggets 2016

About this time of the year, I post my annual recap of items discussed at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting.  This year, instead of concentrating on topics, I'm going to concentrate on some of the more interesting / funny statments from either Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger:

On the choices of women:
If the choice is between two old rich men, choose the older man!

On getting advice from relatives:
A lot of people have terrible relatives.

On a town with no population growth:
Every time a girl got pregnant, some guy had to leave town!

On successful debating:
You should know the other person's argument better than he does.

On working in difficult businesses:
Somebody has to occupy the tough niches in the economy!

On competition:
Win fairly and lose wisely.

And finally, since the meeting was live-streamed for the first time ever this year, I'm going to link to that, and tell you to watch from the 2:42 to 2:55 mark, where Buffett gives a can't miss lesson about successful investing by minimizing expenses.
https://finance.yahoo.com/brklivestream/