Essays

Sale-leaseback: Corporations’ New Scheme To Steal American Homes

Maybe you are elderly and on a fixed income, or for some other reason you cannot afford a major increase in your cost of living, but you live in a Midwestern city where the cost of living is traditionally low. You’ve owned your home for years and have plenty of equity, so you should have financial security, right?

Not so fast. Private equity firms and other “property investors” have bought up homes in your neighborhood to flip them and/or rent them out, driving up house prices. Your county assessor raised their appraisal of your home, and now you can’t afford your new property tax bill. But have no fear, the millionaires and billionaires who caused this problem for you are also here to offer a solution.

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Book Reviews · Investing

Book Review: Active Value Investing

I read a lot of books about finance and investing, and this is one of the best. I seriously put this on par with Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis, Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters), and John Mihaljevic (The Manual of Ideas). It is that good.

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Investing

3 Reasons Microsoft Is a Great Company

Microsoft (MSFT) is one of the leading companies in the technology sector. The media and the President may obsess over Amazon (AMZN), investors may follow Warren Buffett into Apple (AAPL), and the average Joe may spend half his day on Google (GOOG/GOOGL), Netflix (NFLX), and Facebook (FB), but Microsoft has been quietly expanding its empire far beyond its traditional PC business. It has everything from a popular video game system to a 500 million-member social network to commercial software and cloud services. Those products are generating growth and income for the company’s shareholders. Here are three reasons they are doing this so well. Continue reading “3 Reasons Microsoft Is a Great Company”