Entries by admin

Find me in the club with a bottle full of bub

I was in a couple of clubs this past week. Let’s start with the fun club. The Irish band Fontaines DC played a sold-out Slowdown on Saturday night. The band went on at 9 and I almost missed the opener. Maybe they saw the prevalence of white males over the age of 40 and reckoned […]

It just doesn’t matter

I had a thesis: The pandemic boom in camping and water sports is over. Find a stock that didn’t get the memo and sell it short in the hopes of making a profit on the decline. I thought I had found such an overpriced nugget in the form of Patrick Industries (PATK), an Elkhart, Indiana […]

It takes a soul to love the prairie

Are the Cornhuskers back? They seemed unstoppable in the first half. Fun times. The stadium was electric. The second half was a little underwhelming. I’m not so sure about the post-game field invasion by the students. Let’s hold off the pandemonium until we get some bigger wins under our belt. Despite all the flashy antics […]

No country for old men

At the risk of sounding like Jimmy Carter, I felt a sense of malaise at this year’s commercial real estate summit. Last week, the Omaha conference reached its 35-year milestone under the guidance and creativity of the indefatigable attorney and developer, Jerry Slusky. Maybe it was the panel discussion that devolved into career counseling for […]

The secret life of the gas station

I’ve read a lot of business books and I have to say that The Secret Life of Groceries now ranks in my top four. It’s right up there with Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of General Electric, Shoe Dog, and the Enron book by Bethany McLean, Smartest Guys in the Room. Benjamin Lorr spent […]

Old dollars

Rocco Schiavone is a chain-smoking police investigator who has been banished to the Valle D’aosta in the Italian Alps in the humorous and dark cop drama that bears his name. Early in the series, Rocco introduces us to his version of Dante’s hell. Murder is a “level 10 pain-in-the-ass”. Dealing with magistrates is at level […]

Too Hard

I’m getting a little weary of Charlie Munger quotes, to be honest. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no question that we recently lost an intellectual giant and a man of high moral character. His investment acumen and the genius ability to cut straight to the heart of a matter was legendary. But I think the […]

Postive leverage

The Code of Hammurabi dates back to 1750 BC. These ancient laws contained the essence of the first banking contracts for managing loans. The farmer would borrow a bushel of seeds, reap the harvest, give the king about seven bushels of rye and keep three bushels for the family. In the modern parlance of Hammurabi’s […]

Totti, Totti, Totti

I remember watching the World Cup back in 2006. Italy won the tournament after Zinedine Zidane of France was sent off for headbutting Marco Materazzi in one of the most infamous moments modern football, er, soccer. The network must have thought Americans would get bored watching guys kick a ball around for 90 minutes, so […]

Preaching to the converted

Florida panhandle beaches are some of the finest in the world. Pristine white powder. Pensacola is not the kind of place I wanted to visit for lessons about the fleeting nature of human existence, yet there I was. Life is full of cruel twists and turns. Throw the genetic dice often enough and someone you […]