Archive for the 'General' Category

Oct 06 2011

Steve Jobs (1955 – 2011)

As I am sure you all know, Steve Jobs died yesterday at age 56.  Here is a Steve Jobs quote that I consider worth not only carefully thinking about, but thinking about every day:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

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Sep 30 2011

So – Who Wants To Be Successful?

An article this morning highlights a New York Times bestseller ‘How Successful People Think’, written by John Maxwell who has written a number of ‘Leadership Books’.  The article is titled ‘15 Tips On How Successful People Think, and includes an easily viewed 17 slide PowerPoint Presentation – reading time 4 minutes.

Given what I take to be your interest in the Financial Markets generally, and in the Resource Equity Markets specifically, I suggest you read this very short article and Slide Presentation, and objectively score yourself against the 15 ‘successful people traits’ set out in the slides.

I have said in a number of these commentaries that I consider objective and independent thinking to be increasingly important to investing and trading success, particularly in the current and prospective economic and financial market times as I currently see those things.  It is of little surprise to me that these themes underlie a good number of the ideas set out in the Slide Presentation.

Of what I think to be particular note, the article begins by saying “The world’s most successful people have one thing in common:  they think differently from everyone else”.  I suggest you test this thesis by considering whether the most successful people you know – where success is measured by ‘personal ego satisfaction’, which as one factor may include financial success – indeed do in your view ‘think differently from everyone else’.  The article and Slide Presentation stress the importance of:

  • the exercise of the 80/20 Rule;
  • spending time with people who challenge you;
  • brainstorming sessions with others;
  • be able to reject popular thinking, and be able to ‘think for yourself’.  If I have a #1 mantra, this is it.  Said differently, don’t ‘follow the herd’ blindly without independently concluding for whatever your reasons that it makes sense to do that;
  • thinking strategically;
  • listening to people, in circumstances where you maintain ‘conclusion flexibility’ (my words); and,
  • spend time examining where you have been, where you are, and where you are going (Slide #12 summarizes this in the words ‘reflective thinking’).

Based on my own self-assessment, I am satisfied that I ‘pass muster’ on 8 of the 15 criteria all of the time, and pass on another 3 part of the time.  I can only hope those eight are among the most important of the fifteen.  I have a friend in Vancouver who reads these commentaries most days, and often sends me an e-mail giving me his thoughts on my commentaries.  I have another friend who is a Senior Judge in a Canadian Provincial Court.  He reads these commentaries most days, and sends me an e-mail every time he finds a spelling or grammar error.  Both of my friends clearly are very competitive.  I can’t wait to see if either, or both, send me their ‘self-assessment’ scores by e-mail today.

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Sep 21 2011

An Inspirational Story in Bad Times!

Here is what I consider to be an inspirational story in bad time. In a way, this story reminds me about what I wrote about Steve Jobs in my September 2 commentary.  The article, ‘A Blind Man Who Leads’ – reading time 3 minutes – gives a thumbnail of the life of Jim Gibbons, the first blind man to earn an MBA (in 1994) from Harvard Business School.  I suggest you will find this 3 minute time expenditure will worth ‘the price of admission’.

Jim Gibbons has gone on to have a successful career.  Since April 2008 Mr. Gibbons has been CEO of Maryland based Goodwill Industries International.  Under his direction, that organization has grown from 15,000 to 98,000 employees, and is adding over 100 thrift stores a year across the U.S. to its current +2,500 stores.  Note the 2008 – 2011 timing, note the success, note that, to some degree, Goodwill stores may be ‘in the right space at the right time’. Note this and think about directing the operations of a major business while never being able to see any of your co-workers, your facilities, their physical locations and neighborhoods, and so on.  This Is truly remarkable.

Mr. Gibbons obviously doesn’t feel handicapped.  He is reported in the article as saying:

  • “What we’re (the U.S.) seeing much more of in this economy is dislocated workers.  We’re seeing people who have been dedicated, hard-working employees, who have skills for an industry that doesn’t exist anymore”; and,
  • “We’ve got to think long term.  Because otherwise, we won’t have a long term.”

One can only hope this article is placed squarely on the desk of every Washington politician this morning, that they read it attentively and with a certain amount of awe, open their respective eyes a little wider, and actually see and relate to their world (which goes well beyond the U.S. borders) much more clearly and constructively than they currently seem to be doing.

As for Mr. Gibbons, I can only say ‘more than good on him’, while wishing him nothing but continued personal and business success.

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Sep 20 2011

Michael Hlinka on Business Reporting

I have found someone who appears to view the world in the context of current journalism from a similar perspective that I do, and who I think ought to given more credibility than I on that subject.

On August 10 The Canadian Journalism Project Blog published an interview with Michael Hlinka titled ‘More than five questions for Michael Hlinka’ – reading time 5 minutes.  Mr. Hlinka is an instructor at The University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Educations.  He also reports on business issues for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Metro Morning Show.

As you well know if you regularly read my morning e-mails, I frequently have said many times to look for and eliminate the ‘sensationalism’ in article and Internet commentary headlines, think critically about the biases writers bring to those articles and headlines, and think about the content from 10,000 feet when developing you own macro-economic and financial markets views.

The referenced interview deals with Mr. Hlinka’s view on (my words) the efficacy of journalism generally.  Much of the focus of the Mr. Hlinka’s remarks is aimed at journalist reporting on political, economic and financial market events and conditions – the very topics that I believe ought to be top of mind to investors and traders.

While Mr. Hinka’s remarks focus on journalism in the context of newspaper articles, from my perspective his views also not only are relevant to ‘Internet Journalism’, but critically important to ‘Internet Commentaries’, many (if not the majority) of which are:

  • not subjected to editorial review; and,
  • importantly in my opinion, often written by persons with what I think are obvious biases.

As ‘Internet Journalism’ becomes ever more prevalent, I believe there is an ever increasing requirement for those who read Internet Blogs and other Commentaries to diligently self-enforce their own continuous ‘Reader Beware’ rule to that reading and thinking activity.

In summary, Mr. Hlinka’s views on ‘journalism efficacy’ in order of importance as I read and interpret them are, that where there are exceptions to generalities, broadly:

  • many (if not the majority of) articles are written in circumstances where the journalists writing them have their own agendas and biases, and where those agendas and biases may be influenced by a ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you’ philosophy;
  • there is an element of “intellectual sloppiness” (Mr. Hlinka’s words) in the work of many journalists;
  • readers can’t always count on editorial review to eliminate content inconsistencies or accuracy; and,
  • in result, current political and business journalism often leads to ‘reader confusion’ rather than ‘reader clarity’ (a condensed version of what I believe Mr. Hlinka said).

Mr. Hlinka intersperses his views on a number of political issues with his views on ‘journalism efficacy’.  While I don’t agree with all of what Mr. Hlinka says on the U.S. political front, I do agree with a good deal of it.  That said, I consider my disagreements with him irrelevant to this commentary, and so haven’t added them.

If you have read my biography, you know I spent my adult life as a business valuation consultant, and only began writing ‘Internet Commentary’ three years ago.  From a credibility perspective it is one thing for me to comment on the efficacy of journalist reporting in these e-mails.  It is quite another to read much of the same views expressed by someone who has a business background, and currently is an academic and radio commentator more familiar with media and media reporting than I am.

I strongly recommend you take the time to read the referenced interview, form your own views on Mr. Hinka’s remarks, and include what you take from those remarks in your ‘Reader Beware’ mantra going forward.

You might also want to read an article published today titled ‘Fair and balanced after all? The bias of the US press’ written by two academics, Riccardo Puglisi, an economics professor at the University of Pavia, and James Snyder, a professor of Government at Harvard University – reading time 10 minutes.  The Puglisi/Snyder article begins with the following short executive summary:

“Is the US media biased? According to a controversial new book, it is – and, perhaps surprisingly, to the left. This column takes a different analytical approach and argues that the press is actually much closer to the average voter’s sentiments than we might think. Might all these claims that the media is biased in one direction or the other be adding a whole new set of distortions?”

If you read enough of my commentaries on this subject, and interview reports and articles such as these two, you might begin to wonder whether you ought to believe anything you read or hear from media sources.  I don’t believe that is a sensible conclusion.  Rather I think that one needs to simply approach media (including Internet) releases with a very cynical eye and ear, and use their own background, experience, intellect, and most important commons sense and instinct as they ‘think for themselves’ and reach their own conclusions.  Simply put, as I see things all I am saying about media releases in my e-mails, and all that is being referenced about what others have said in this particular commentary, is that as an investor or trader you need to ‘be on notice’ and that ‘to be forewarned is to be forearmed’.

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