Politics, at its highest level, is the delicate fake dance between what’s popular to say, the issues that are sure to get you votes, and actually doing what’s right for the sake of the nation, popular or not.
If I’m reading investor behavior correctly, I believe we have seen the bottom. Before I get into my TOP FIVE reasons, as to why I think the worst is behind us and stabilization might be ahead, I want to address the importance of sharing research, insights and thoughts and letting others critique it through the prism of their biases.
It was right after my three-year mandatory stint as a combat soldier in the IDF that my friend and I decided to backpack through New Zealand and Australia.
President William Howard Taft, who presided over one of the worst banking shocks in U.S. history, was explaining to Woodrow Wilson, the incoming president, who got America its Federal Reserve and made the call to get America involved in WW1, that the job at the White House would isolate him greatly. “This is the loneliest place in the world,” Taft said. Wilson was stunned by the warning, but was even more shocked by the reality of it: “I never dreamed such loneliness and desolation of heart possible.”
The stock market is comprised of very different types of investors. For example, pension funds or sovereign wealth funds get a constant inflow of money and are mandated to deploy it and put it to work. These fund managers are dealing with tens of billions of dollars and even more.
Not many have heard the name Sam Zell, but the billionaire real estate tycoon is a well-known figure in his circles. When Sam’s daughter was working with Stephen Schwarzman on Wall Street in the early 1980s, she told her dad that Schwarzman had left the investment bank he was with and founded a private equity firm called Blackstone.
