I’ve been a bit MIA from the blogosphere lately. The month’s worth of content I had written ahead of time has dwindled to about zero, my comments, guest posts, and what not have been on a very low level. Have I given up on the blog? Absolutely not! Rather I’ve been working on my 2nd side hustle. One that is very different …
Dumpster Diving for Fun and Profit
I recently read a Wired profile on Matt Malone. This guy is not your typical dumpster diver. He’s highly educated and makes a six figure salary. Apparently Best Buy’s, Office Depot’s and other big boxes are incredibly wasteful and just toss out tons of perfect (or near perfect) condition items of all shapes, sizes and values. “If he were to …
The big lesson from Warren Buffett’s bet
Since this is a week for Buffett and Berkshire, now seemed like a good time to revisit the famous bet that Warren made with Ted Seides, CFA, and President / Co-CIO of Protégé Partners on who would win over 10 years – the S&P or a selection of 5 fund of funds chose by Protégé. The S&P has crushed them the past 7 years. …
What I learned from 50th Anniversary Berkshire Hathaway Letter
One of my favorite annual publications came out today, the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter! Yet again Berkshire had a killer year. Berkshire’s gain in net worth during 2014 was $18.3 billion, which increased the per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock by 8.3%. Over the last 50 years (that is, since present management took …
Cash Flow is King
I work in Houston, which lives and dies by the price of oil and gas. When commodity prices are up, we’re a true boom town, but when they go bad, the whole city can go south quickly. Just in the past week, Schlumberger has announced at least 9,000 layoffs and dozens of other smaller companies are following similar exercises. The …
Pappas Bros
I love when you find a phenomenal family business story. Even better when its multi-generational. You know a family is doing something right when they manage to not only build their own little empire, but the whole family stays involved long after they don’t need the money. It starts in 1897, when H.D. Pappas immigrated to America from Greece. He …
Texas to Allow Crowd Funding for Real Estate
An interesting way to invest that I’d not heard of before popped up on my radar today (thanks to Swamplot) Per Silicon Hills New, That makes Texas the 13th state, and the largest to date, to adopt its own equity-based crowdfunding rules in advance of the U.S. SEC’s expected national rules. The JOBS Act of 2012 authorized the SEC to create new …