PE4FAMs Blog

The zombie motif was popularized by the horror movie “Night of the Living Dead” where zombies and vampires morphed into aggressive and deadly undead preying on humans. The zombie concept  moved into finance with the advent of Zombie Banks in Japan in the “lost decade” of the 1990s. Those Zombie Banks were kept alive by […]

Remember when a Japanese investment group bought Pebble Beach Golf Blub September 1990? It seemed like every important asset was being gobbled up by an ascendant Japanese economy. Soon thereafter in 1992 the Japanese real estate market crashed and then, in a great imitation of a kamikaze, the Nikeii followed suit  Now, more than 25

In the lower middle market our management teams are the biggest contributors to investment returns. When you are lucky enough to inherit a great management team you can usually count on sustained growth and sequential profitability. Good managers immediately understand the vital few objectives and are typically honest about organizational capacity and risk mitigation. Spam

The last time I went for a physical examination the nurse who was taking blood samples and updating my medical record was shocked when I reported I was not taking any prescription medications other than an oral inhaler for seasonal asthma. Aside from being a medical freak, I got the feeling from her there were

In the US we rarely think about currency because ours is the reserve currency of the world. Oil is priced in US Dollars. Many loans to emerging countries are denominated in dollars to hedge against currency devaluations. For a long time the Chinese Yuan was pegged to the dollar. Bretton Woods Established The Dollar Dollar

The moon tides in Maine this summer reminded me about risk in investing. Normal tides can be 8-9 feet but a few days every several months the tides change by 12-13 feet. Your complacency spikes when almost every dangerous shoal and rocky point has 25% more water than during a normal tide. Conversely, ebbing tides

In a recent article in Barrons “What To Do With Excess Cash” Abby Schultz points out there is an interesting trend among high net worth investors to hold a high percentage of their investable assets in cash or cash equivalents: “According to Federal Reserve figures, retail investors had about 18% of their assets in money

You don’t hear much about the financial status of the retiring baby boomers. Maybe that is because the news is pretty scary. I picked up on this by reading Ballmer’s USA Facts.  More recently the Wall Street Journal in an article by Heather Gillers, Anne  Tergesen and Leslie Scism in the June 22 edition suggests