The IPO for Facebook is slated for next Friday, May 18th. In the video below I sum up my response to a client thinking about grabbing up a few shares. He wants me to “talk him down from the ledge.” His words.
Pardon the shoddy camera work. I’m breaking in a new guy.
Why do companies choose to move to one city as opposed to another? The same reason you would—MONEY. And just like you and I would, companies want to go where they’re most welcome.
If either of these makes a company like Apple bad, then I don’t know what’s good.
As both an investor and an investment advisor, I’m glad that Apple will finally leave (at least in part) the state of California. Any mismanaged state that is keeping down the price or dividend of a stock we own ought to have to answer in this way. We should be demanding that companies we own find the most prudent pathway of providing us a return. Putting their heads in the sand and ignoring important issues like this is not what we want them to be doing.
And companies should be demanding that their home states recognize where growth comes from, that they welcome their capital and potential tax base. Companies need to demand that states make it easier to do business.
When a company like Apple takes a drastic step like this, these money-wasting politicians (firmly established on both sides of the isle, by the way) hear one message loud and clear: “We’ll no longer pay your inflated tax rates.” And if that’s what it takes to get them to listen, so be it.
Apple—that nimble giant—made just such a statement, but California wouldn’t listen. So they simply did what you and I would have done: they walked out.
In the years to come, we’ll see if Texas can remember this lesson.
This is an unusual post for a Wednesday, but this is an unusual Wednesday. I don’t usually have birthdays and internal organs removed on the same days, so yeah, it’s unusual.
I know, you’re probably wondering How old is Evan, anyway?
Thank you for wondering. Today I’m 40.
This captures well how I’m feeling about that number (and probably most of the numbers from here on out):
Gall bladder, by the way.
I wasn’t sure what a gall bladder did before this. Now I know. Gall bladders sit and do nothing and when you least expect it (and probably when you’re having more than the usual amount of fun, say, a vacation) they provide the body with intense pain and demand to be removed.
Now you know too.
I just picked up this classic for the first time. I would encourage anyone to read this. It’s interesting, it reads fast, and it reminds us that although much around us appears to change, there is really nothing new under the sun.
The following is from the middle of the book. He’d been shipwrecked for some time – ten years or so – living only on what he could salvage from the wreckage and that which he could find, make, grow, or kill.
“I had now brought my state of life to be much easier in itself than it was at first, and much easier to my mind as well as to my body. I frequently sat down to meat with thankfulness and admired the hand of God’s providence, which had thus spread my table in the wilderness. I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they see and covet something that He has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”
A great and simple recipe for a rich, contented life. To fight against anxiety and worry, there is no better remedy than this:
~ Recognize the hand of God’s providence
~ Give less consideration to what might be lacking
~ Approach the day with thankfulness for what I have
~ Take another step and begin to express thankfulness for what others have that I do not
May we all be so wealthy. Have a thankful week!
