the hypocrisy of american capitalism

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 15, 2008 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 4 comments   Whew! Its tough to type, “the hypocrisy of American capitalism” just knowing that so many folks have “dyed in the wool” faith in their own personal capitalism. So lest I leave a potentially controversial statement out there for too long, let me get straight to the point… In my opinion, capitalism is supposed to be about, as Joseph Schumpeter and others before...
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the importance of trust

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 13, 2008 in Blog | 0 comments   I have had several conversations in the last week with my fellow, non-retired, financial professionals about the impending regulatory environment. In each case they are fearful that too much regulation will be put into place. They all feel that it is inevitable that the regulators will overstep their bounds and put in place regulations that will make our economy less competitive. I...
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since when did Best Buy become a bellwether?

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 12, 2008 in Blog | 2 comments   Just a quick note: As you may know financial markets are reeling again today. The cause seems to be Best Buy’s Third Quarter Earnings report. Best Buy did say some things using pretty strong language. For example, “Since mid-September, rapid, seismic changes in consumer behavior have created the most difficult climate we’ve ever seen,” said Chief Executive Brad...
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a simple model for understanding freefall markets

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 12, 2008 in Blog | 0 comments   I wanted to share with you a piece of wisdom from Edgar Peters who wrote a book about using Chaos Theory as applied to investing, called “Fractal Market Analysis.” The book is fairly long, but the one insight that I have continued to use for over ten years is about the underlying reasons for rapid market declines. Peters says that there are two types of investors: those with a...
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crudeness

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 12, 2008 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 1 comment   …and by crudeness, I mean oil prices. I wanted to copy the text of an e-mail that I sent out to friends and family back on July 21, 2008: “Hello Friends and Family, Normally I do not send out bulk e-mails…however I have believed for a couple of years now that market speculators have done much to drive up the price of our natural resources in the last three years. I have...
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hubris sucks, pt. 2

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 11, 2008 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 11 comments   So I realized early this morning (5:30 here in the forgotten time zone) that I neglected to fully empower each of you with actionable information yesterday. I rambled on about hubris without giving you the full tools necessary to ferret it out at a prospective or current business. Yes, it’s true that I defined the difference between “swagger” and “hubris,”...
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hubris sucks

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Nov 10, 2008 in Blog | 5 comments   Hello everyone! Wow! $150 billion for AIG! Unbelievable. That ‘s a hell of a lot of money. Who could have seen that coming? Well, interestingly enough there is one tell-tale sign that always underlies these sorts of colossal problems; from Enron, to Tyco, to Worldcom, to AIG. That tell-tale sign is: hubris. Hubris is a behavioral disease that leads to extraordinarily bad judgments being...
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