Mauldin Letter

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we...

According to the dictionary, the word angst refers to “a feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world in general.” It comes from a German word for “fear.” Two weeks ago I referred back to my 2017 Angst in America series. “Deep anxiety or dread” is...

We’ve reached the Thanksgiving weekend, and as always, I’m thankful for loyal readers like you. I hope you are enjoying some quality time with family and friends. And because of the holiday, this week’s letter will be shorter than usual, but I think it will offer real value. Year-end is rapidly approaching, which...

Those who experienced the 1930s as adults are mostly gone now, but they left notes. We have a pretty good record of what that period was like. It wasn’t fun to begin with—then it got worse. This year, I’ve written several times about the 1930s parallels that Ray Dalio and others see with our situation today. The...

Nothing is forever, not even debt. Every borrower eventually either repays what they owe, or defaults. Lenders may or may not have remedies. But one way or another, the debt goes away. One of Western civilization’s largest problems is we’ve convinced ourselves debt can be permanent. We don’t use that specific word,...

If you are a computer (other than the newest experimental quantum ones), your world is entirely binary. Everything is some combination of zeroes and ones. The machines can do marvelous things with those two digits but they have limits. We humans don’t have to think in either/or terms, yet we often do. I see it in...

Every investment decision should have an exit strategy. What will you do if your idea doesn’t work? Ideally, you make that decision before you invest. Mistakes are inevitable but survivable if you recognize them quickly and act to minimize their costs. The same is true in business, international relations… or even a...

And once you see it, you cannot unsee it. I’m not alone. Here is what we are observing at macro scale: That it has been common knowledge—something we all knew that we all knew—since the Nixon years that by simply exporting capitalism and free enterprise, we would unshackle the forces of freedom in China. That this...

“In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them....

Life would be so much easier if we didn’t have to worry about our financial futures. Though I suppose we don’t have to worry. Animals don’t. Squirrels instinctively store away nuts and thus live through winter without much thought. We humans have retirement winters, and we’re more sophisticated than squirrels. We...