week end report
Silver linings and dark clouds. Oases and deserts. Yin and yang. Yang and yin. Take a slice through any situation and there will be good and bad. It is rare that an exact balance exists, and if it does, it doesn’t for long.
Within public opinion, optimism and pessimism rarely balance. We, and especially the media, always find something to worry about. It is a human survival trait. We had to watch for the lurking tiger and be aware of unstable ground. The other survival trait followed. We had to find how to get past the tiger and travel along solid footing. As a species, we had to learn to look for the bad and the good.
The world is in a big hurt. Maybe more than a million jobs lost. Serious disruption and some collapse of large corporations and institutions. Millions of people in distress. And yet, our society and world have enormous potential. People are awake to the problems and, since the election, feel more empowered to make a change.
My views on my hopes for the world would fill another book (and by the way, my first copy of Dream. Invest. Live arrived yesterday. Yay!) When archaic institutions and corporate bureaucracies fall away lives are disrupted. That disruption spawns anger at loss and then passion for a solution. Passionate solutions are more powerful than government programs.
Passionate solutions are also where I look to invest. Times are tough, but stocks are cheap, and new approaches to old problems are progressing. The eternal enthusiasm of entrepreneurship within America frequently is typically stifled by high barriers to entry and resistance to change. Traumatic times break some barriers and cause enough people to seek and welcome change.
The turn around for some millions of lives will not be sudden enough. Those are the lives that should be bailed out especially, if this is a government of, by and for the people. In the meantime, rather than prop up old industries, lets encourage new ones that don’t encumber us with as much pollution, useless features, or reliance on insecure resources.
The markets will turn around before the majority of lives are stabilized. And before that, small companies with timely solutions will pass from overlooked to enthusiastically anticipated. Find those companies, find those stocks, and your own life may fill with optimism, hope, and eventually fulfillment.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
