The Long Term Investor

Good job carrying the board this week....SMOKIE, RG, and others.

I am now sitting in the airport on my way back from a BUSY week in Alaska. Catching up on some reading. I like this little article.

Why Hands-Off Investing Pays Off
Put money into low-cost stock and bond funds, but don’t forget the rest of the recipe: Leave your investments alone.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/...unlocked_article_code=1.ek8.VulK.9aVWzp9gskmI

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"Don’t do it.

Don’t touch your investments.

That’s the simple, yet hard-to-practice, lesson of a new study of investor behavior by Morningstar, the financial services company. It found that over the last decade, most people hurt themselves by trading. Once they put their money into stock and bond funds, they would have been much better off if they had just left their money alone.

In fact, Morningstar found that, on average, the actual returns of fund investors were significantly less than the posted market returns, a discrepancy explained by poor trading decisions — buying when the market was high and selling when prices were low.

Over extended periods — say, 30 years — this drag on returns produces chilling results: a reduction in the money in an average investor’s portfolio of more than 18 percent, according to Morningstar calculations performed at my request.

“Investors hurt themselves when they are prone to inopportune trading,” Jeffrey Ptak, managing director of Morningstar Research Services, said in a phone conversation. Finding ways of resisting the temptation to buy and sell is critically important.

This isn’t easy, for several reasons.

First, much of the financial services industry is dedicated to incessantly selling new products and services, including advice, intended to keep you buying and selling the latest new thing. That kind of behavior generates handsome profits for asset managers and advice-givers, but not necessarily for you.

Second, the swings of the stock and bond markets provide plenty of motivation for fleeing to the sidelines — or, when the markets are rising, for jumping into hot investment prospects with all the money you can muster. This may work out well for some people, but for most of us, the markets are too complex to be outsmarted. Historically, it has been better to buy and hold.

Third, shifts in domestic policy and politics may frighten you so much that you are no longer comfortable participating fully in financial markets. Undeniably, the Trump administration is making big changes. It has imposed the highest tariff rates since the 1930s, has detained more immigrants than at any time in the last 20 years, has denigrated the government’s own statistical agencies and is swelling the country’s debt load, just as a partial list. It may be that the administration is fundamentally altering the U.S. economy and markets. In that case, the traditional approaches of buying and holding stock and bond funds may no longer apply.

I find these last arguments difficult to refute. If you are alarmed by them, consider making a sober alteration in your asset allocation — reducing risk as best you can, and making sure you’re diversified internationally. But I’d think carefully before abandoning long-term investing in stocks and bonds.

Be mindful that merely by intervening in your own portfolio, you are taking risks. It’s possible, for example, that the current problems will dim in importance when seen from a vantage of a decade or more from now, and that other developments, like artificial intelligence or something we can’t even identify yet, will propel the economy more rapidly than most people expect.

The lessons of the markets, and of the latest study, suggest that a humble approach may be wise. It’s hard to beat the markets.

Findings

Most people in the United States use mutual funds and their close cousins, exchange-traded funds (E.T.F.s), to invest. (Mutual funds are older and have more total assets in them than exchange-traded funds, but E.T.F.s are growing more rapidly.)

The Morningstar study, “Mind the Gap 2025,” included both types of funds in its research. It restricted its scope to funds established by Dec. 31, 2014, and followed those that survived through the next 10 years. Many other studies have demonstrated that most funds can’t outperform the market.

This study, the latest in a series done by Morningstar, aimed for something different and, arguably, more important. It tried to show how fund investors fared in the real world, not how their funds performed in the abstract. And its findings were clear: “The more investors traded, the less they made,” the study said.

The study used what is known as asset-weighted returns, meaning if you had $6 in one fund and $3 in another, the first fund received twice the weight of the second. If you moved $1 from one fund to the other, their weights would change, and so would the performance of your portfolio. This method enabled the researchers to compare investors’ returns with how funds performed.

The good news was that the average fund, including both stocks and bonds, did quite well, returning 8.2 percent annualized, including dividends, over the decade through December. That’s what investors would have gotten if they had bought funds and held them. But that’s not what people actually did.

Because of human decisions to buy and sell at inopportune moments, the average “investor return” was only 7 percent annualized — a gap of 1.2 percentage pointseach year. That may not seem like a large number, but it compounded every year, amounting to significant losses over extended periods. In fact, it worked out to a gap of about 15 percent over 10 years, the study found.

Over 30 years, additional Morningstar calculations found, the gap amounted to 18.4 percent. Let’s translate that into concrete numbers. Suppose you had put $30,000 into stock and bond funds on Aug. 1, 1995 — with $10,000 going into U.S. stocks, $10,000 into foreign stocks and $10,000 into U.S. bonds. On July 31, 2025, the $30,000 in those funds, if left alone, would have swelled to $279,483, on average. But because they traded, investors received only $228,079, a gap of $51,404. Over even longer periods, the average investor shortfall would have been even larger — perhaps enough to make the difference between comfort and austerity in retirement.

One positive note centered on target-date funds, which are usually held in 401(k) and other retirement accounts. They do much of the work for you, typically allocating more stock in the fund when you are starting out and ratcheting up safer bond holdings as you approach retirement. Because of this gradual, automatic rebalancing, target-date funds don’t require much human intervention — and, as a result, Morningstar found, people using them tend to stick with their investments and reap more rewards.

“That’s a major takeaway of the study,” Mr. Ptak said. “Target-date funds and other allocation funds are doing their job.”

On the other hand, investors in so-called sector funds, focused on technology or military stocks or anything else, traded much more frequently and had the biggest return gaps.

Guidelines

Make use of these findings if you’re just getting started. Go ahead and invest, by all means, by buying publicly traded stocks and bonds, preferably through cheap, diversified index funds that will give you a piece of the entire global marketplace. Automate the investment process so that you don’t need — and aren’t tempted — to interfere with it once you’re heading in the right direction.

Even veteran investors will benefit with a hands-off approach, the study suggests. Cultivate ways of avoiding being swept up in the spirit of the moment — whether it be “irrational exuberance” driving up share prices, or a spreading sense of panic and dread about the future of the country and the world.

Over long periods, global stocks have tended to produce handsome profits, investment-grade bonds have been steady income producers, and people who have been able to stick with broadly diversified holdings of public securities over decades have generally prospered.

So-called alternative investments like private equity funds and cryptocurrency are much riskier. Even if it is possible to hold them directly in retirement accounts one day — as President Trump would like — I’d proceed cautiously. Without a solid long-term track record, these options would be risky for investors — though probably quite lucrative for their promoters. Even if they are ultimately approved for inclusion in workplace accounts, I’d hope that they would be excluded from default target-date funds, and I’d do whatever I could to avoid holding them.

Reaching for better returns may hurt you in the end. Keep your investing clean and simple, avoid risks you can’t afford to take and try to stash enough money in safe places to pay the bills. If you’ve done all that, remind yourself: Leave your investments alone."

MY COMMENT

TRADE.....at your own risk. I have yet to see a single trader that I have known over my entire lifetime be successful.

BEWARE.....your little brain telling you to get out or get in....it will trick you every time.

I just sit and do nothing....even with my nine big cap stocks.

 

Since I.....BUY AND HOLD for the long term and am always fully invested.....being away for a week did not matter one bit. Here is the week ahead.

Powell's Jackson Hole speech, Walmart earnings: What to watch this week

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/powe...rnings-what-to-watch-this-week-113502376.html

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"The investing world will turn its attention to northwestern Wyoming in the week ahead, with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell set to give his most important policy speech of the year on Friday at the annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium.

Held each year at the Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park, the Kansas City Fed's annual meeting often serves as a crucial set piece in the Fed chair's calendar that signals key shifts in the central bank's thinking.

Ahead of Powell's speech — likely to be his last as Fed chair — markets are placing the probability the Fed will cut rates by at least 0.25% next month at around 85%. Clues from Powell about the speed and depth of the cycle the Fed is about to embark on will be the week's biggest market-moving event.

On the corporate calendar, results from Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT), and Home Depot (HD) highlight a slowing earnings schedule that sees the retail sector remain the key focus.

And the economic data flow will be slow this week, with Thursday's updates on initial jobless claims and service sector activity the top highlights.

Investors may also keep a closer eye than usual on the minutes from the Fed's July 30-31 meeting released Wednesday, which could offer more color on the decision from Fed governors Waller and Bowman to vote against the central bank's decision to keep rates unchanged in a range of 4.25%-4.50% last month.

One more for the road

In 2018, Jerome Powell addressed the Jackson Hole symposium for the first time as Fed chair, outlining his views on the key variables that central bankers wrestle with, elucidating his non-economist's view on the most technical aspects of monetary policy.

In the intervening seven years, Powell has proven himself to be more of a pragmatist than a theoretician as he navigated 2018's false start on rate hikes, the COVID pandemic, the 2022 inflation shock, and the still-incomplete rate-cutting cycle that kicked off over a year ago.

"The time has come for policy to adjust," Powell said last August.

Rate cuts from the Fed in September, November, and December of last year have been on pause since. Growing dissent among his colleagues on the FOMC — and months of more forceful commentary from the White House — has seen Powell end up right where he stood a year ago.

In his 2018 speech, Powell spoke at length about Alan Greenspan's decisions in the mid-90s to hold off on rate hikes, lauding the former Fed chair's "wait and see" approach and foretelling a preference to wait that has defined much of Powell's tenure.

"Given what the economy has shown us over the past 15 years, the need for the sort of risk‑management approach that originated in the new-economy era is clearer than ever before," Powell said at the time. Barring the Fed's quick actions in March 2020, this line explains much of Powell's approach.

As Powell gets set to end his time leading the Fed, the president has bestowed on him a nickname: "Too Late."

"The diversity of views on the FOMC is one of the great virtues of our system," Powell said. "Despite differing views on these questions and others, we have a long institutional tradition of finding common ground in coalescing around a policy stance."

In a year, a new Fed chair will address the crowd at Jackson Hole. Interest rates will likely be lower. But how this new chair views these tenets of central banking will be the more important answer for the future of the Federal Reserve.

Retail's tale

Retail sales rose 0.5% in July following a 0.9% jump in June.

Economic data indicates US consumer spending has stabilized after tariff-related surprises this spring. How this information comes through in earnings reports scheduled for the week ahead will be one of the week's defining themes.

Walmart's results Thursday morning, given the retailer's sheer size, will offer the broadest canvas for investors to work from.

The company said in May that consumers remained "choiceful," with the company seeing growth across all income cohorts. Three months later, any signs of more confident spending will be welcomed by investors.

Wall Street expects its US same-store sales rose 4% in its fiscal second quarter, according to Bloomberg data. In its fiscal first quarter, same-store sales rose 4.5% in the US. Walmart stock has gained over 10% this year, outperforming the S&P 500 by roughly a percentage point.

At Target, questions over the company's leadership loom with shares of the retailer down over 20% this year. Home Depot, meanwhile, is navigating a US housing market some commentators have said is in recession, though interest rates have pointed to potential signs of a thaw in the coming months.

Single-stock stories always stand at the ready to push around markets. Earnings from Nvidia on Aug. 27 will be another in this genre.

But last week's market action showed investors starting to move past the daily headlines in an indication of a market finding firmer footing.

"The bull market for stocks continued this week, and we’ve even seen some rotation out of the year’s biggest winners into beaten down laggards like Health Care and homebuilders," Bespoke Investment Group wrote in its weekly letter to clients.

"When momentum names stall or sell-off, it can really hit the major indices hard if no other areas of the market are there to pick up the slack, but this week, the year’s worst performers finally saw some buying interest as investors rotated across the market instead of out of it."

Like most things in modern life, the stock market story remains defined by easily digestible ideas like "Sell America" or acronymic memes like TACO. But the S&P 500 hit a record high this week. Twice. The absence of euphoric feelings from the investor class is another way to stamp this rally with a clean bill of health.

And while the market has been driven by Big Tech and the AI trade, this week's market rotation shows investors acting on another one of the society's defining themes in 2025 — everybody gets a turn."

MY COMMENT

I dont care one bit what POWELL has to say. It is meaningless. I dont care if we get ten or zero rate cuts this year. I am interested in the "next" FED chair.

I am waiting for my HD and WMT earnings......and....will watch the continued management failure and circus at Target.

Of course the big one.....NVDA is next week.

 

What did they expect?

Two Decades of Socialist Rule May End as Bolivians Start Voting

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/two-decades-socialist-rule-may-120000235.html

I am ALWAYS amazed at people that invest in a 401K or brokerage account......and BS against free market capitalism. WHATEVER.

 

YES....this is good news indeed.

Some good inflation news: Car insurance is falling back in line

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/some...urance-is-falling-back-in-line-202444790.html

"Economists are busy hunting for signs of tariff-induced price hikes in the monthly inflation data. They may be overlooking some good news, which is that a surge in the cost of car insurance is finally abating."

Some good data and content in this little article. With the typical fear mongering at the end.

 

AMEN.....in any environment.

Why investors shouldn’t try to be a ‘hero’ in this economy, analyst says

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/14/why-investors-shouldnt-try-to-be-a-hero-in-this-economy.html

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"Key Points

• Relatively weak job growth and the specter of higher inflation ahead due to tariffs mean investors may not want to take outsized risk, according to market pros.
• Investors have chased lofty returns for crypto and certain tech companies, one financial advisor said.
• Rebalancing, holding a diversified portfolio, and having an appropriate mix of stocks and bonds are key in this environment.

Data suggests the U.S. economy may be in a precarious spot — and investors may be wise not to take outsized risks with their portfolios for fear of steep losses, experts said.

“This is not the environment to be a hero in,” Callie Cox, chief market strategist at Ritholtz Wealth Management, wrote this month in a newsletter.

In other words: Stick to your long-term investment plan, including an appropriate asset allocation and time frame to reach your goals, experts said. Avoid the temptation to funnel a big chunk of money into high-flying shiny objects like individual technology stocks or cryptocurrency, they said.

“You need to own a basket of quality assets and investments, hold your breath and let markets do their work,” Cox said in an interview with CNBC.

To be sure, this is sound perennial advice typically offered by financial planners.

But some market-watchers caution that economic headwinds could serve up ample volatility in the coming months.

“I think there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic, but also cautious at the same time,” said Winnie Sun, co-founder of Sun Group Wealth Partners, based in Irvine, California, and a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council.

The job market appears to have weakened considerably, for example.

Employers in the public and private sectors added 35,000 jobs, on average, over the past three months, according to federal data.

Job growth from May to July is happening at a “pace you normally see around or in recessions,” Cox wrote.

It’s also down from average monthly growth of 123,000 jobs during the same three-month period of 2024, and from 111,000 in the first three months of 2025.

The size of the U.S. labor force has declined for three consecutive months, which hasn’t happened since 2011, Cox wrote.

“The job market is in a precarious spot after months of slowing consumer spending,” Cox wrote. “The American consumer drives the economy, and the economy ultimately drives the direction of markets,” she added.

Economists also worry about inflation reigniting as tariffs levied by the Trump administration work their way into higher prices for consumer goods and services.

There have been some signs of that in recent months, and many economists expect that inflationary pressure to bite harder in coming months.

Despite these headwinds, experts say the economy isn’t in dire shape. The stock market has also continued to march to new highs, with the S&P 500 stock index up about 10% since the start of the year.

Many of Sun’s clients have shown urgent interest in artificial intelligence and crypto amid lofty returns, versus more bread-and-butter long-term planning, she said.

Shares in tech giants like Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia are up about 34%, 24% and 36%, respectively, this year, for example. Bitcoin prices are also up over 25%.

It’s a “hurry-up-and-invest” mindset, Sun said.

“A lot of people are feeling like they’ll be left behind,” she said. “But we don’t feel like we have the full picture yet on where the U.S. is economically.”

Tariff policy has whipsawed in recent months, leaving markets and investors grasping for answers as new import duties are announced, delayed or rescinded in a rapid-fire fashion, according to market-watchers.

“Right now, we feel it’s best to stick with diversified and long-term plans,” Sun said.

“A lot of the decisions being made right now are not financially driven,” she said. “I think it’s much more emotions-driven.”

Sun advises investors to be well-diversified, and avoid the temptation to over-allocate their portfolio to growth-oriented sectors like technology. Having a well-diversified portfolio diversifies risks in the event lackluster economic data send markets tumbling, she said.

Exchange-traded funds or mutual funds, which are baskets of several different securities like stocks and bonds overseen by professional asset managers, can help the average investor stay diversified, she said.

ETFs often carry relatively low fees compared with mutual funds, and so can offer a cheap way to diversify.

Rebalancing more frequently in this environment is “key,” Cox said.

That entails ensuring your asset allocation hasn’t been thrown out of whack if certain segments of your portfolio outperform or underperform for a period of time.

“You never want to hit a market selloff and be more exposed to it than you think,” Cox said.

Jacob Manoukian, U.S. head of investment strategy, at J.P. Morgan Private Bank, cautions that taking too much risk off the table could also have adverse outcomes for investors.

Companies continue to have strong corporate earnings despite some relatively weak economic data — a dynamic that can persist for a while, he said.

“It’s hard to give advice to reduce risk substantially when corporate earnings are as strong as they are,” Manoukian said.

“When companies are surprising to the upside to that degree, we’d encourage investors and our clients to have the right amount of risk for their plan and not reduce risk unduly — that’s a way to under-perform,” Manoukian said."

MY COMMENT

It is NOT about "feelings".....it is about fundamental reality. The bull market is alive and very well. BUT......many people dont realize the risk they are taking has outstripped their risk tolerance.

I would not downplay the odds of a CORRECTION before year end and definately over the next six months.

STAY rational and reasonable......and....very long term as usual.

 

Ok.....I will be back home in about TEN hours.......midnight.

I have absolutely NO CLUE how I did last week......it was a very erratic week.....and I could not check my account......since I never do so on the road..

 

The current market is not similar AT ALL to the fraud and BS of the dot-com era and crash. BUT.....one of the legitimate stocks of that era.....CISCO....is a lesson for people to consider.....before getting too crazy.

As the drop started I sold many dot-com stocks that got too big for their britches. But I considered CSCO tech royalty that would be able to hold up to the drop. I initially bought $25,000 of CSCO stock. I rode that position up to a high of $250,000. In the end....I rode it all the way back down to.....yes you guessed it.....$25,000.

NVIDIA and the Cautionary Tale of Cisco Systems

https://www.hardingloevner.com/out-of-our-minds/nvidia-and-the-cautionary-tale-of-cisco-systems/

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"NVIDIA, the giant semiconductor company founded by Taiwanese American Jensen Huang, seems invincible these days. Annual revenue has more than doubled since 2020. Its stock price has more than doubled this year and is up more than 700% over the past five years. It is one of the rare trillion-dollar market-cap companies.

Perhaps most intriguingly, NVIDIA is a leading company in the biggest tech-driven trend to come along in years, artificial intelligence. It makes the chips that power AI-based computer systems, and it sells the software and services companies need to operate their own AI programs. And NVIDIA was a big company before AI took off.

As if to emphasize the point, this week the company posted third-quarter revenue of US$18.1 billion—tripling from a year ago and setting a company record. Earnings were also a record at US$10 billion.

NVIDIA meets all our core criteria for a quality growth company: It has a sustainable business and a competitive advantage, solid management, and financial strength. Over the last six years, its revenue has grown from nearly US$7 billion in fiscal 2017 to just under US$27 billion in fiscal 2022.

But as NVIDIA reaches dizzying valuations—it currently trades at 118 times earnings—we can’t help thinking of another good technology company whose stock once commanded nose-bleed premiums: Cisco Systems.

Cisco makes the networking equipment that enables much of the internet. As the World Wide Web was taking off in the mid-1990s, Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers was telling people a new era of computing was coming, and the company’s hardware played a big part in making that new era real. Between 1995 and 2000, its revenue surged 850%, from about US$2 billion to US$19 billion.

Cisco stock did even better, growing an incredible 3,800%, from US$2 in January 1995 to US$79 in March 2000. The title of its 1999 annual report exhorted investors to “Capture the Momentum.” Many took that advice. In March 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble, Cisco became the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of more than US$500 billion.

Then the dot-com bubble burst. Cisco shares fell 88%, dropping from US$79 to a low of US$9.50 two years later. That drop wasn’t the result of any large change in the company’s performance. Revenue was nearly US$19 billion in fiscal 2000, US$22 billion in 2001, and about US$19 billion in 2002. But the premium that investors were willing to pay for the company disappeared as the hype around the web faded.

Over the next two decades, Cisco kept growing. Its sales in 2022 were nearly US$52 billion, more than double the US$19 billion it hit in 2000. Yet its stock has never traded as high as it did on March 1, 2000. Today it’s at roughly US$53. On a total return basis, it took 20 years for Cisco stock to recover from the dot-com crash.

So, are there lessons we can learn from Cisco as we look at NVIDIA? Just as Chambers argued 25 years ago that a new era of computing was at hand, Huang has been talking up AI. Just this month he said “In the last 40 years, nothing has been this big. It’s bigger than PC, it’s bigger than mobile, and it’s gonna be bigger than the internet, by far.” The enthusiasm for AI’s future has led to very high valuation multiples for NVIDIA, although not as high as Cisco reached in 2000.


Source: YCharts

By all accounts, NVIDIA is strong—in its last full fiscal year (2022), it earned US$9.8 billion on US$27 billion in revenue—and in an enviable position. Semiconductors are the oil of the 21st century, an essential component for the tech-fueled modern world. The company produces chips that allow for the most advanced computing, expanding from its core gaming prowess into related lucrative areas like data centers, autos, and of course AI.

But as Cisco shows, the success of a company and the performance of its stock aren’t the same thing, and as valuations increase, it’s more and more difficult for a stock to outperform. Over the past 50 years, 231 companies have reached a similar multiple. Only 20% of the stocks trading with a price/sales ratio between 30 and 40 outperformed the market over the next 12 months. The more you extend your time horizon, the worse the results get. Over a 10-year period, that number drops down to 6%.1

NVIDIA is a good company with all the quality and growth prospects we look for in an investment. The critical question is how much one is willing to pay for those prospects. As Cisco showed in the waning days of the dot-com boom, overpaying for a good company is a bad choice."

MY COMMENT

A good lesson here for owners of NVDA......and.....PLTR. I am not inclined to sell or take any profit in either one....at this moment. My capital gains tax would be too outrageous.

BUT......there is a good lesson above with CISCO to keep in mind. Sometimes to preserve capital and peace of mind....you just have to bite the bullet and take some profit. You dont have to sell all......perhaps enough to capture back your initial investment....so you are playing with....."free money"....going forward.

 

NO COMMENT.

 

I agree completely......the FED is now IRRELEVANT.

The Major Economic Lesson In the Life of Jacklyn Bezos

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/ar...son_in_the_life_of_jacklyn_bezos_1129387.html

(BOLD is my opinion OR what i consider important content)

"“I want you to know what the risks are, because I still want to come home for Thanksgiving if this doesn’t work.” That’s what Jeff Bezos said to Jacklyn and Miguel Bezos when they invested a little over $245,000 in Amazon, his online bookstore. Bezos placed his odds of failure at 70 percent. It was likely an optimistic projection.

Which is the point. And it’s an economic one, though one that economists, economics reporters and politicians continue to gloss over. While the seeds of real economic growth are being planted all over the United States as you read this, and in conversations not unlike the one Bezos had with his parents, the deep in economic thought can’t get their minds off what will happen in Jackson Hole this week, and what hints Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will convey to his rapt audience about his present and future intentions with the “Fed funds rate.”

To say a Jackson Hole focus is a total waste of thought and energy is to put it mildly. See Jacklyn and Miguel Bezos’s intrepid investment in their son once again.

The simple, routinely ignored truth is that for the companies that matter, and that actually power economic advance, what the Fed tries to do with rates is utterly immaterial. As is pointed out routinely in my upcoming book, The Deficit Delusion (release date: August 19th), there’s not an interest rate high enough to compensate investors for putting their wealth to work in startups.

Evidence supporting the above claim can be found in the value of Bezos’s parents’ Amazon shares. No doubt they sold a little or a lot over time, but assuming they’d held onto each share acquired with their $245,000 investment, the latter would be worth $30 billion today.

The difference between the capital committed by Bezos’s parents and the ultimate worth of their investment speaks volumes about the near total irrelevance of the Fed to economic growth. The Fed’s rate fiddling is done with the aim of influencing the overnight lending rate within banks, except that no bank or banker would have ever loaned Bezos $245,000 for Amazon.

Bank loans quite simply must perform, which explains why Bezos wasn’t seeking or getting bank loans for his business idea. Banks can’t lend to concepts that have 70%+ odds of going bankrupt, which yet again explains why Jeff Bezos went to his parents instead of a traditional bank. The Fed and its efforts to influence bank lending has nothing to do with anything.

Which brings us to Jeff Bezos himself. He’s been criticized for being rich himself, and he’s also been criticized for not having a plan to give his wealth away. Jacklyn and Miguel Bezos’s loving, but also courageous investment in their son explains why the critics would be wise to hold their fire.

As their $245,000 investment in Amazon loudly indicates, money is precious. It can be transformative. Exactly because Jeff Bezos has hundreds of billions to put to work, his capacity to author the commercial future through investment in the Amazons of tomorrow is unrivaled. As with his parents, interests are so very much not the point.

They never are. Yet when readers read the financial press or watch financial news this week, Jackson Hole will dominate the discussion, far removed from what truly powers economic growth."

MY COMMENT

YES....banks are mostly irrelevant to start-up companies. They are also mostly irrelevant to the big cap companies that dominate the world. the sort of companies that I invest in bring in so much free cash flow and have such HUGE hoards of money sitting around....that interest rates and the FED are NOTHING to them.

The media will hang on every word out of Jackson Hole.....but in reality.......who cares.....I know that I dont.

 

Here is what I mean above......again.....WHO CARES.

All eyes on Fed Chair Powell's final Jackson Hole speech

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rate...NjkhKeeD921JNsfT7Iwaj_I5aN1VhcSltGk41SkL6KN6I

 

I have two earnings reports this week. HD on Tuesday and WMT on Thursday. I believe both are before the open.

I than have earnings from NVDA on Wednesday August 27 and COST on September 25. That will end earnings this time around for me.

 

I will miss the open tomorrow. I have to take a couple of paintings in for High Resolution photos to be taken for a museum exhibition catalog.

Not that the market or my portfolio cares.

 

Being out of town on Friday I did not have access to my account. I NEVER look at it if I am on "strange" internet service. As an update......as far as I can tell.....I ended the week on Friday with my entire account at year to date.....+20.06%. The week prior at the close of the week my entire account was at year to date.....+20.50%.

So a slight loss for me last week in my YTD number. Not very significant....however.