In 1539, 30 years after San Juan was founded, the Spanish began building defenses of its harbor on the northern shore of Puerto Rico. Construction continued for another 250 years. Now that’s a long time-horizon! The mammoth fort known as Castillo San Felipe del Morro (or “El Morro”) is still standing.
In 1983 Bonnie Tyler's ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ rocked the FM airwaves, reaching number 1 on the Billboard chart. My father, who couldn't get enough of the tune and played it over and over.
Music star Taylor Swift has taken the country by storm this year, selling out large football stadiums in every city lucky enough to have her perform.
At the end of 2021, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 36,338, and the career scoring total of LeBron James stood about 60 points lower…
In 1987, Sports Illustrated, the preeminent sports periodical of the time, predicted the Cleveland Indians would win the American League pennant in its baseball season preview.
…war is an old habit of thought, an old frame of mind, an old political technique.
One of the fundamentals of basketball is that a player who has picked up his dribble can evade trouble by pivoting away from a defender.
In the second half of 2020, Alphabet began buying back C shares, which caused C to regularly trade at a slight premium to A, a reversal of the historical norm. In actual dollars, this meant the C shares traded at $2,511 while the A shares were $2,402.
Shanghai Surprise is a 1986 movie about a con man, a nurse, and a coveted supply of opium. Markets got a Shanghai Surprise of their own in the third quarter, as China’s “common prosperity” movement led to crackdowns on myriad industries.
In the children’s book “Snow” by Uri Shulevitz, the story starts with gray skies and no precipitation
Within days of each other in March two Northeast Ohio legends passed away: Michael Stanley and Joe Tait.
In the fourth quarter of 2020 the November 9 Covid-19 vaccine data prompted a shift in the market on that day, as the cards were turned over on Pfizer’s/BioNtech’s candidate. The positive efficacy data led to a strong rally in lowly-valued stocks and shares of companies that had been negatively affected by the pandemic.
The beat went on in the third quarter as growth stocks once again shone, propelling the S&P 500 to a 9% gain. The market continues to be narrow, with the index being carried by a relatively small number of companies. While the index is up this year, the average stock is down. This is generally considered to be unhealthy.
In 1976, Grateful Dead released “What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been.” The second quarter felt like a long strange trip, except it took place over just three months. We entered the quarter trying to flatten the curve, did so, and saw the economy reopen and social distancing restrictions relaxed to a degree.
