In the 1990s, Cisco was the hottest stock in the world. It gained a remarkable 89,000% throughout the decade.Cisco shares peaked in March of 2000 at a $550 billion market cap. That year the company made a $2.7 billion profit. That would give CSCO a P/E ratio of around 200x at its peak.The prices investors were willing to pay for tech growth brought the entire stock market to bubbilicious levels. I...Read More

Tomorrow, President Trump will finally meet face-to-face with President Putin.The summit will take place in Anchorage, Alaska, as covered in detail by our friend Byron King earlier this week.President Trump has stated that his primary goal is to reach a ceasefire agreement. If an agreement isn't reached, Trump told reporters that Russia would face "severe consequences". He is likely referring to f...Read More

For decades, the Ivy League has been treated as a sort of financial Olympus an elite club where money flows like vintage Bordeaux and the only financial hardship is deciding which fund manager gets to manage the latest billion-dollar donation.Harvard, Yale, Princeton... the names alone conjure images of investment portfolios so dense they have their own gravitational pullBut here's the inconvenien...Read More

Humans are poorly wired for investing.Our operating system remains optimized for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.By default, fear, greed, and envy reign supreme. Each of these emotions can be destructive on its own, but together they can be disastrous.As a result of our brains' faulty wiring, the average investor sees annual returns of around 5% vs the S&P 500's long-term 9% performance.Human psyc...Read More

Last week President Trump made a big move in the currency wars.He appointed Stephen Miran, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, to a vacated seat on the Fed's Board of Governors.I'm going to pull together some important threads. I'll also speculate about what Trump's plans for remaking the Fed might mean for international trade, and how Miran can assist.This could translate into a...Read More

It's 4,350 miles (7,000 kilometers) from Moscow to Anchorage, almost a straight shot over the North Pole via great circle navigation. And it's not quite 3,400 miles (5,435 km), again via great circle nav, from Washington, D.C. to what some locals call "Anchortown."Great circle routes to ANC. Courtesy GreatCircleMap.com.I mention this point of cartography because today I'll discuss the upcoming sum...Read More

India and China are each home to over 1.4 billion people.Together, the two countries host a whopping 35% of the world's population.The United States and its allies have worked hard to support India as a counterweight to China. American leaders have gone out of their way to embrace India, despite its strong military and economic relationship with Russia.Why? Because India is a key partner in Americ...Read More

Bureau of Labor Statistics head Dr. Erika McEntarfer is one of the latest persons President Trump has told "you're fired." President Trump said this month that he fired Dr. McEntarfer because the president believed she manipulated jobs data. Manipulations, he stated, include the updated May and June BLS numbers showing the U.S. economy created 258,000 fewer jobs than originally reported, as well a...Read More

On yesterday's editorial call, my good friend and colleague, Byron King, mentioned that The Donald was doing well domestically, but abysmally when it came to foreign policy.I recalled how I wrote about King Leopold III of Belgium, who had the same problem. So I started thinking about The Donald and his nearly schizophrenic second administration.Americans are happy with his domestic policy, and the...Read More

Young Americans are fracturing along ideological fault lines.They are breaking into two camps. For lack of better terms, we will call them the far-right and far-left.Unfortunately, there are few surveys which ask these kinds of questions. Pollsters still query along legacy party lines, Democrat vs. Republican, even though those labels are losing relevance.Fortunately I have two teenage kids, and f...Read More

The price of samarium has risen 60-fold over the past year.What the heck is samarium, you ask? It's a rare earth element (REE) used to create magnets designed for high temperature applications.Samarium-cobalt magnets are about 60 times as powerful as your average fridge magnet. They are used in fighter jet engines, where actuators and generators must be able to withstand temperatures up to 350 deg...Read More

In the world of horse racing, many of the all-time greats have been closers.A closer is a horse that starts off slow, then surges on the back half.Many of the best racehorses of all time have been closers. Zenyatta, for example, is a mare that won a remarkable 19 of her 20 races.Zenyatta – Source: LA TimesZenyatta was an iconic closer. In one noteworthy race, she reached a peak of 40 mph dow...Read More

It's not often that significant national policy is announced outside of Washington, D.C., let alone outside of a major political address with all the spectacle and theater. But every now and again, something big happens in unusual places.Consider how, on June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall announced his eponymous Marshall Plan at the Harvard commencement ceremony, in Cambridge, Mas...Read More

'It certainly has a 1999 feel to it,' we said to no one. Working alone in our little octagonal office in rural France, 'no one' is our assistant…our confidante…our right hand man. As sharp as a tack. As empty-headed as a cabinet member.We look back. As the 21st century gestated, the US stock market became more and more absurd. Companies with no earnings, no business plans, no employees...Read More

The recent disclosures by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard of wrongdoing by the Intelligence Community (IC) and the White House at the end of the Obama administration are shocking. It would be an understatement to say they were the most important story of the year. These disclosures (and what will follow) are one of the most important stories in U.S. history.Your editor with T...Read More

For over a century, two dead advisors have shaped the way great powers view the world.On one side, we have Alfred Thayer Mahan the American naval officer who believed sea power determined global supremacy. According to Mahan, controlling the oceans means controlling trade. If you control trade, you control wealth. If you control wealth... well, you get the picture.On the other side is Halford Mack...Read More

"The bank that has only enough cash for its daily requirements is unsafe," noted Henry Ford in 1906. "And the car with only enough power for ordinary use falls down in an emergency," he added.Henry Ford, circa 1915. Courtesy Ford Motor Company.As a budding industrial tycoon in America's gold-standard days, pre-Federal Reserve, Mr. Ford knew a thing or two about cash, banks and unsafe banking. And...Read More

President Trump has recently suggested that, unless Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell cuts interest rates, the president might revert to his The Apprentice days and tell Powell, "you're fired."President Trump backtracked on firing Powell after the president's comments caused stock markets to fall. However, it is almost certain that President Trump will not reappoint Powell when Powell's term...Read More

With the Trump Administration headed down the road to higher inflation and the political chaos that results, it is worth asking why there are "only" $4 trillion in notional crypto tokens, this according to the Financial Times. The rise of bitcoin and other ethereal instruments evidences a strong desire on the part of many Americans to escape a sinking ship, but also confirms the love for creating...Read More

The past 10 years has been dominated by tech.The Magnificent 7 is up 2,278% over that period. That's Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Tesla, Meta, Amazon, and Apple.It's been an incredible run. But the tech bull will soon be put out to pasture. Valuations are stretched. Employees are already filthy rich off stock options, draining their motivation.Spending on AI hardware and talent is completely out of...Read More