Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of August 21, 2018

Article Excerpt

Here’s the text of the most-recent letter I sent to our Portfolio Management clients in late July: “When I wrote my July 2016 quarterly client letter, one month after the U.K. voted for Brexit, I felt we had entered what you might call a “tumultuous but non-catastrophic” period of great historical change. I said that you need to take this into account when selecting investments. Here are six “tumultuous but non-catastrophic” developments that you can sum up in a word or two: Trump; North Korea; Trade Wars; marijuana legalization; U.S. tax reform; artificial intelligence. Some people hear this and say, “Pat, how can you be so blind? President Trump is all the catastrophe the world can handle!” It’s as if the glare of Trump’s personality blinds them to everything else. People used to say something like that about former U.S. President Richard Nixon. Trump, like Nixon, elicits extreme reactions. However, before Nixon resigned in disgrace, he completed three momentous achievements that qualify him in…