Resources Sample 2025
February 2025
The potentially most important Resource of 2025 may very well be Howard Marks's magisterial January 2 memo “On Bubble Watch.” It distills 50-plus years of the ultimate market wisdom in Mr. Marks's lucid, straightforward prose. You owe it to yourself to commune deeply with this piece. You can even listen to it on Oaktree's website. Beyond must-read: priceless.
August 2024
Alexandra Armstrong CFP is the doyenne of the American financial planning movement, and absolutely no one has contributed so much to that nascent profession over so long a period of time as has she. Her devotion to this calling was born out of pain: her mother was widowed when she was eight years old, and a small trust fund was subsequently mismanaged. Alex's mission has been, and continues to be, helping other women in general—and widows in particular—take charge of their financial lives.
Mary Donahue became Alex's client when she was unexpectedly widowed in her mid-40s, with two daughters. In 1993, they collaborated on what was and remains the single greatest resource for widows that's ever been written: On Your Own: A Widow's Guide to Emotional and Financial Well-Being. Alex and Mary have striven over the years to keep this classic book evergreen: a sixth—and to my mind by far the best—edition has just now been published.
The inexorable demographics of the baby boom being what they are, this country is incubating more and more widows all the time, and these women are inheriting wildly unprecedented quantities of wealth. The new edition of On Your Own is an indispensable read for any advisor who hopes to be capable of serving this cohort with distinction.
November 2024
Geoff Colvin recently wrote a must-read piece in Fortune with the very long title “The creator of Moore's law said it couldn't ‘continue forever'—and would be astounded by the chips Intel and its competitors are making now.” It's a ringing testimony to what he calls “human ingenuity's endless reach, relevant to challenges of every kind.”
Chip makers now work at the level of atoms. “These new chips are more than just astounding,” Colvin finds. “They were supposed to be impossible.” Gordon Moore himself believed that the laws of physics would allow transistors to get only so small. “The crucial question was how small.”
“The saga of Moore's law,” Colvin concludes, “is an example of how we almost always underestimate human ingenuity.” That's been a constant theme of my talks this year, most recently in a virtual presentation I made in October to a Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment conference in Manchester, England. It also informs the epilogue of the new edition of Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth.
Once again, two great truths that can ennoble our careers as wealth managers—if we let them. (1) Excepting only love, human ingenuity is the most powerful force on earth. (2) Equities are the only asset class that fully captures human ingenuity.
Optimism remains the only realism.
October 2024
I'm a huge fan of Robert Bryce, who writes and speaks perceptively (and eclectically) on climate, energy, politics and much else. He's the author of a book that I treasure: Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong. And he created the fascinating documentary film Juice: How Electricity Explains the World. Most recently he endeared himself to me with the wonderfully compelling essay “Five Reasons To Be Bullish On the United States,” which every Spartan should read and send on to every client and prospect he/she has.
I can't possibly do this essay justice, so I'll just recite Bryce's five reasons: the best higher education system in the world; demographics (we're the only developed nation on the planet whose population is both growing and relatively young); geography/agriculture (we're self-sufficient in all the essential agricultural commodities, and indeed are the world's leading exporter of them); energy (first among nations in oil, natural gas and nuclear energy production); and best of all, our Constitution. Read it now; blast it to your entire world by nightfall. They need it badly.
June 2024
I've read and heard, as I'm sure you have, numberless remembrances and tributes to Charlie Munger since his passing last November, just before his hundredth birthday. I'm most grateful to longtime subscriber John Short for sending along what I consider not just the best of these, but one that seemed to me superior to all the others I'd seen, put together. (Thank you, John; but for you I'd not have known about this.)
Chris Davis's nine-minute video “Lessons Learned from Charlie Munger” is remarkably eloquent, affectionate, perceptive, and in the end quite deeply moving. There are, in this very short talk, insights about the life we've chosen that will strike the heart of every Spartan. (My personal favorite is Munger's admonition to “Live your life in a web of deserved trust.” I had to play that back a couple of times to make sure I'd heard it right—and so that I'd never forget it.) Do give this your full attention.