Today’s post is a departure from the norm of investment news and snark.  I’m going to share a bit about my son, William, and ask you to spend a minute of your day to think about his cause. William was born in 2010 with Autosomal Recessive Polycystic Kidney Disease, or ARPKD.  We spent his first days with him in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).  He was in a plastic box and a machine was helping him breathe.  These were critical days.  We couldn’t hold our son.  He was cradled by a tangle of tubes and monitoring cables.  Most of all, the sounds will stick with me.  The beepbeepbeepBOOP alert of his pulsox unit, the inflating of the blood pressure cuff every 15 minutes, and assorted klaxons and pings haunt me.  You wonder if this alert is the big one.  What’s wrong?  And we were powerless to do anything, wondering if…

Like many classic fables, the story of the frog and the scorpion can be traced back to many cultures, each with their own twist.  Aesop’s version is here. A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.” Argentina was once the rising star of the global economy.  By 1913 it was the world’s 10th wealthiest country per capita owing to abundant natural resources and governance that emphasized economic growth.  After a military takeover in 1930, Argentina experienced constant political change.  From 1930 to 1983, the country averaged a new president every two years.  Argentina defaulted on its international debt in 1956, 1989, 2001, and 2014.  The 2001 default resulted in a highly…

Children have trouble focusing their attention.  To get my son to turn all his attention to his homework (since when do first graders have homework, anyway?), we often need to mute or turn off the TV.  Handheld screens are completely off the table for him unless we are on a long car ride.  He doesn’t have the discipline to choose substance over sparkle.  YouTube knows that he and his generation love unboxing videos and shoddy animation.  Don’t think the media isn’t targeting you the same way. As an adult, you should be immune to such base manipulation, right?  This is not the case.  Advertisers need to get you to self-diagnose moderate to severe Wandering Toe Syndrome and ask your doctor if Toeproxin™ is right for you.   How do they do that?  The adult version of unboxing videos is drama.  This used to be the domain of prime-time fictional television….

The last 24 hours have been eventful.  If you need yet another perspective on world events, keep reading.  If not, just skip to Other Stuff where it’s less serious. We launched missiles into Syria. This feels like the typical setup where the world calls on the US to act as the world’s police, our military is deployed, and the world decries our meddling in world affairs.  A dictator is butchering his own people, but no one is willing to do anything about it except us (sternly worded letters don’t count as action).  If we don’t do anything, we’re abandoning the region to nefarious powers.  If we go in guns blazing, we’re warmongers.  Ad hoc missile strikes seem to have minimal political backlash while still accomplishing a mission. If this doesn’t lay to rest the conspiracy theory that Vladimir Putin controls our executive branch, it certainly erodes its credibility. In one…

Red Herring With headlines proclaiming the worst day for the stock market in 2017, you might think the market has plummeted in a bout of panic-selling.  This is a red herring.  The S&P 500 hasn’t been down more than 1% in over 100 days.  Of course we’re going to have another 1% down day some time, but the real story is the lack of big down days rather than breaking this streak.  I’m sure some poor souls are reaching out to their brokers to ask what they should do.  CNBC is shaking the tree with the noise around this ridiculous headline and brokers are happy to collect the commissions that fall into their laps. Red Swan The concept of Black Swans has been bastardized almost beyond recognition.  Nicholas Taleb put forth the idea of a Black Swan event being something outside the realm of normal expectation making a significant impact that…