March 23, 2020

“To buy when others are despondently selling and to sell when others are greedily buying requires the greatest fortitude and pays the greatest reward.” Sir John Templeton

Investors bold enough to invest in stocks during the dark days of the Great Depression would have seen their stakes grow tenfold by 1957. Marketplace, January 5, 2009

The Federal Election Commission rules require employed persons to disclose their occupation and employer when making campaign contributions. Recently, ten Amazon employees identified their occupation as “slave” of “slave labor.” Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2020

Going back to 1930, if an investor missed the S&P 500’s 10 best days in each decade, total returns would be just 91%, significantly below the 14,962% returns for investors who held steady through the downturns. CNBC, March 7, 2020

Cruise ship companies are lining up for a little love from the Feds, but the big secret of the cruise industry is they really don’t pay all that much in taxes anyway. The U.S. tax rate for major cruise companies was just 0.8%. The companies tend to be headquartered in Florida, but the ships are registered in foreign countries in attempts to skirt U.S. taxes and those countries tend to be the ones with more favorable tax regimes.  Last year, their global tax rate on over $17 billion in profits was estimated to be just 1.3%. Numlock News, March 17, 2020

A clinical research group in London said it would pay each volunteer $4,480 who agreed to be infected with a tamer relative of the novel coronavirus in the hope of finding a vaccine. More than 20,000 people signed up. The Wall Journal, March 19, 2020

“Alcohol: the cause of, and the solution to, all of life’s problems.” Homer Simpson

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