A classic example of this happened to a client of mine: an appliance manufacturing company. The sales and production departments worked together to ensure that stock was delivered on time to cover sales promotions. Things were going well, customers were buying appliances through the promotions, and back orders almost ceased to exist. Yet, while sales [...]
The subtitle of Harvey Mackay’s book Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive (1996) offers this advice: “Do what you love, love what you do, and deliver more than you promise.” There’s no better way to develop a trusting partnership than to do more than the minimum your partner expects. Trust isn’t automatic; it [...]
Had the airline been more precise with its employees and stated that it regarded the stock option as a different form of paycheck, perhaps my friend wouldn’t feel so resentful. The airline overstated the scope of the partnership and inflated employees’ expectations. A similar proposal may backfire in the future. The next time the labor [...]
Aggregate financial ratios give a reliable picture of the state of the highyield market and should not be neglected irrespective of technical factors. Technical factors driving the high-yield market can change fairly quickly but credit status will persist as hard evidence and change only slowly over time. The most important fundamental measures are: Free cash [...]
Index fund investors and pseudo-index fund investors must be prepared for a decade of mediocre returns. Stock investors looking for the fast lane will find it clogged. Frustration and other symptoms of unmanageability will be common. Should indexing lose popularity, returns will turn negative as investors seek alternatives. If the herd abandons the index funds [...]
Each investment has its own emotional traps. Ancient tribes stored seeds through winter. These tribal savings were loaded with community and individual feelings. Today, few realize the embedded emotion in passbook savings accounts until banks begin to fail or inflation destroys the purchasing power of precious dollars. Investing produces a wide range of emotion. The [...]
By getting your debts taken care of as soon as possible, you can begin taking care of this goal, so that it, too, doesn’t overwhelm you later. After all, your goal is not to just eliminate debt or save for the future, but to do what you need to do, so you can get on [...]
I’m not going to bore you with every possible financial goal, but if you plan on putting yourself or someone else through college in the future, it’s imperative that you begin to save for that now. Again, to save adequately, you’ll need to eliminate your monthly debt obligations as soon as possible. Failure to plan [...]
The magic by which seemingly small income streams get magnified into huge market valuations is intimately tied up with the arcane mathematics of perpetuities. It sounds dull, but it is well worth understanding because it is the mathematical foundation of Wall Street wealth. Aperpetuity is defined as an investment offering a level stream of cash [...]
If innovation has been the source of our extraordinary prosperity, it is important to inquire about its future. The good news is that the rate of discontinuous innovation in Western society appears to be accelerating. This rate is likely to hold if the two bedrock premises of innovation also hold over time: (1) the willingness [...]