The startup company I've been working at for just over 4 years is now a unicorn. In the tech industry "unicorns" are privately held startup companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more. We passed the $1B mark today with a public announcement of new funding led by major global investment banks.


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I spent over $20,000 shopping on Black Friday... but not on 4k QLED TVs, Amazon Dots, Apple earbuds, or any of the myriad other things advertised left, right, and center yesterday. I bought pieces of companies.

The stock markets were down on Friday. News about a new Coronavirus variant emerging raised fears of new rounds of lockdowns impinging ( Read more... )

My company has finally instituted a 401(k) match! A lot of people take these for granted, but in smaller companies- which I've worked at since 2004- they're uncommon. In fact I haven't had one at any of the small companies I've worked at until now.


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Are we still in a recession? That question occurred to me recently. It's kind of surprising there hasn't been much about it either way in the news lately. On the one hand, parts of the economy have been doing quite well. Others... maybe not so much? It's unclear.

Clearly things were bad last year in the spring. The National Bureau of Economic ( Read more... )

The past few days you may have read something about wild stock market gyrations of otherwise unremarkable companies like GameStop- they're still around?- and WallStreetBets (WSB), a Reddit forum. What's happening? Well, think about the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, then think about this as a case of man-bites-dog. Or as I've called it above, "Bros ( Read more... )

Every year around the New Year I reflect upon the past 12 months. This year it's challenging to write about. I could just observe, for about the billionth time, that 2020 was a total dumpster fire and be done with it....


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Charles Dickens famously began A Tale of Two Cities with the line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It feels a bit like that right now as Coronavirus lockdowns progress through their 21st week. But only a bit because there's no argument for this being the best of times. It's more like, "Is this the worst of times, or are we ( Read more... )

"The market is not the economy." That's a phrase I've been bouncing around in my head for a few months now. I've been meaning to write about it here for some time. Alas I scooped my blog by posting it at work, in response to our CEO. 😨 In a public forum. 😰 At an all-hands meeting ( Read more... )

Today, April 15, would normally be Tax Day here in the US, the day that personal income tax filings are due. I started my taxes over two months ago and predicted I'd have them filed 6 weeks before the deadline. How'd I do? Well, I actually finished my filing in late February, seven weeks before the deadline. But then I sat on it for a few weeks ( Read more... )

Riding the rollercoaster of the financial markets the past several weeks has been dizzying. Not only are the markets down a lot due to economic concerns over the impact of Coronavirus, which is nauseating in itself, but the volatility is high. There have been days of +/- 10% gyrations in broad market indices. It's mind boggling to see that on those ( Read more... )