Dr. Riedy's Random Thoughts

Dear Friends and Family: It is easy to think about what to do with the good things in our lives, those we may have been taking for granted. See my November 29, 2021 essay, "Never Take for Granted a Good Night's Sleep". Identify, embrace and appreciate them. But what about the bad/sad things, and the disappointments and frustrations we may also be taking for granted? What do we do with or about them? These are not simple questions. They arise from an observation, which I consider quite profound, made recently by our 19-year old grandson: "In this era of COVID I have gotten used to being disappointed." Let me put his insight into context before asking for comments from family and friends. Recently, my wife and I were thrilled to be able to corral/entice/bribe/host our two teen-aged grandsons (16 and 19 years old) to join us on a week-long cruise of the Mexican Riviera. As they checked out the list of excursions in Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta, they picked the...

It has come to my attention that those individuals who have my blog postings automatically sent to their email addresses may end up with one continuous paragraph, mind-bogglingly long and off-putting. I believe, if you read it here on the blog, it may appear with paragraphs as I intended. If you prefer to have the essays more readable, with paragraphs as appropriate, please consider sending me your email address with a brief request to be added to my distribution list. The ONLY thing I post here are my essays. I first email them to a list of just over 450 individuals, and those arrive with proper indentation. The only use I make of the distribution list is to email out these essays. Also, it has come to my attention that when I sent my last email, two individuals (whom I verified had not blocked my emails themselves) did not receive copies of my email. I received an error message that they had rejected them. I know that there have been some upgrades made recently by Apple (or mayb...

RESPONSES TO “ONE FOR THE TEXTBOOKS (OF THE FUTURE)” Thanks to all of you who responded to my essay so quickly and thoughtfully, at times also emotionally. I applaud you for sharing your thoughts with me and the larger group of readers! Before I begin quoting (anonymously) several of the responses, I wanted to refer to an industry newsletter forwarded to me by a friend. In it the author addresses what he considers to be an overvalued stock market. I wanted to share with you the phraseology of his conclusion because I thought it was excellent, not only for his narrower opinion of the future course of stock prices and stock indices, but also for today’s economic and financial prospects more broadly. In brief, he admitted to not knowing how the level of stock prices and indices will finally resolve themselves. However, he was confident it would not end happily. In this “Readers’ Responses” essay I have tried my best to exclude any material I considered political in nature. Part of me ...

Although our retirement fund is managed professionally, I still fret over how it is positioned on an overall aggressive/defensive basis even though it appears to be well-hedged and conservative. My major concern is that IF/WHEN interest rates start to rise again, as they certainly will at some point in the future (a 100 percent safe bet), the market value of those holdings will decline. It’s an arithmetic thing, not a guess. At the same time, as interest rates begin to rise and become more attractive to investors, money may well shift into interest-bearing debt securities and out of the stock market, thereby leading to lower stock values. I’ve oversimplified, but there is some truth in what I say, that if/when rates start to rise the interest-bearing debt in our portfolio will decline in value and so will the stocks. Not happy thoughts. Pulling everything out of the market and putting it under our pillows is not the solution, but the purpose of this essay is not to discuss portfoli...