“In 1883, Monet and his family settled at Giverny, northwest of Paris. Three years later he acquired an adjacent piece of land and applied for permission to dig a pond, which he hoped would be a source of artistic inspiration,” writes Rebecca Wei, President of Christie’s Asia. “In his petition to the local authorities, Monet specified that the pond would serve ‘for the pleasure of the eyes and also for the purpose of having subjects to paint.” One of Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) “Water Lilies” or Nympheas en fleur, painted circa 1914-1917 will be offered to bidders in “The Collection of David … [Read more...]

A $50 lobster roll? Talk about sticker shock. But that’s the reality in Boston. “A combination of lousy weather, international demand, and iced-over Canadian fisheries has created a shortage that has driven whole hard-shell lobster prices to as high as $15 a pound this spring, up from about $8 a pound last year,” reports Janelle Nanos in the Boston Globe. “For chefs buying pre-shucked lobster meat for their rolls, the price has been hovering at $40 a pound, or about $8 more than a year ago, several said.” Nanos continues: Typical pricing for a lobster roll at North Square Oyster in the … [Read more...]

There’s a certain discipline required of the stock investor whom adheres to a dividend-centric investment strategy. It’s not for the FOMO (fear of missing out) crowd that talks up their latest stock heroics at cocktail parties—a never in doubt but often wrong crowd if I’ve ever seen one. At the end of the day, it’s the dividend investor whom usually has the last laugh. Looks like a truckload of cash from the recent tax cut will be paid out in the form of dividends. Young Research's Retirement CompoundersSM Portfolio, a dividend-centric stock portfolio, has outperformed the DJIA and the … [Read more...]

Originally posted May 18, 2017. Make Your Bed by Admiral William H. McRaven (U.S. Navy Retired) is a little blue-book about little things that can change your life…and maybe the world. It was inspired by the commencement speech McRaven gave on May 21, 2014. Start your day with a task completed. Make your bed. And, as he explains in Chapter Ten: Never Quit. McRaven told Business Insider in an interview: Admiral McRaven: We used to have a saying in SEAL training, "Take it one evolution at a time." Meaning don't look six months down the road. Don't ask yourself or don't look and say, "My … [Read more...]

Over the past year, the total return for Vanguard Wellesley has been just over five and half percent. “Five and a half percent? What’s so great about that,” you might think. Well, it can be great if you’re a patient investor and you allow the miracle of compound interest, what Albert Einstein is said to have referred to as the eighth wonder of the world, to work its magic for you. Father Time can be your friend, as I will explain in a moment. Yesterday, I was speaking with a client whom I’ve been working with since his mid-50s. He’s in his early 70s now but it hardly feels like close to … [Read more...]

“Designed to be addictive, Facebook feels like a giant blood-engorged tick hanging off your frontal lobe,” writes Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone. You may recall, Taibbi coined Goldman Sachs as a “[G]reat vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” In his piece on Facebook, where the median salary is $240,430, Taibbi makes a case for breaking-up the band which is more like a cult. What is it like to be on the inside of Facebook’s corporate walls? Former senior Facebook worker Antonio Garcia Martinez wrote the book, Chaos Monkeys, in a way that Michael Lewis did about his time … [Read more...]

You Might be a Mountain Man if… If you live on a mountain and regularly send pictures of nosy black bears sniffing around your front door and casually note in your email: “Had some visitors last night,” then, you might be a mountain man. Meet Tim Jones. He is: “The Stissing Mountain Man.” Tim Jones lives on Stissing Mountain, located in the Hudson Valley in Pine Plains, New York. I met Tim when his son, also Tim, began working with us 11 years ago. I’ll refer to them as Tim Sr. and Tim Jr. for this piece. You know when you meet someone and there’s a genuineness where you know they … [Read more...]

"After bitcoin’s frenzied rally last year, prices have lost about two-thirds of their value from a December high. The cryptocurrency had been trading around $7,000 in recent days, although a sharp jump Thursday morning briefly lifted the price above $7,900, according to CoinDesk,” writes Steven Russolillo in the WSJ. “Nonetheless,” he continues, “in the past few months, bitcoin has faded off the front pages of newspapers and it no longer dominates people’s social-media feeds. Global internet searches for the word “bitcoin” have fallen by over 80% from December, according to Google … [Read more...]

Originally posted on December 1, 2017. Bitcoin is being considered by some as their emergency stash. For me, when the power goes out, I prefer having dollars on hand. ATMs will be out of commission, and depending on road conditions, even if my bank is open, I’m not sure I’ll be hitting the streets to make a withdrawal. One of the many hurdles bitcoin faces is frictionless exchange. It doesn’t have the general acceptance by society yet like the dollar, and to achieve that acceptance will be a monumental task. In an emergency situation, I want to be able to have cold hard cash on … [Read more...]