Sunday, July 24, 2011

A few good reads

I came across a post by Jason Cohen called Rich vs. King in the Real World: Why I Sold my Company for the second time in the past few months today and highly recommend you check it out.

He talks about the way cash in the bank affects your lifestyle and makes the point that the relationship is not linear.

I'm now as jealous of Jason as I am of Scott Adams and his Dilbert Money, but I don't begrudge either of them their well earned financial freedom.

By the way, you are correct- I haven't posted anything in a long time. I'm still keeping up with the markets though. One blog I started reading regularly over the past few years is called Zero Hedge. I recommend you check it out if you're looking for some good reading. They write a lot more than I do and take an interesting, alternate view you won't see on a lot of the big financial news websites.

My comments on the current state of the market are as follows: I haven't seen a truly positive headline in years, gold is shooting through all time highs, interest rates are practically nothing, the dollar continues its decline, the US may default on its treasury debt, yet the equity markets have seen a strong rally since they recently bottomed out in 2009.

I'm most of the way through a pretty good book called More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite (Council on Foreign Relations Books (Penguin Press)). It is a history of hedge funds, tracing managers and styles from the early days of the industry to today. In my opinion, the author has a pretty strong agenda - pushing his viewpoint that hedge funds are good for the economy and shouldn't be strongly regulated - but aside from the few opinion sections, the book is a great read sofar.