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Albert Einstein is rumored to have said that “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” These days interest rates are near zero. The average savings account currently pays .09% interest per year, according to the FDIC. So over
Warren Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, didn’t outperform the S&P 500 last year. Berkshire Hathaway grew slightly in 2019, but its performance lagged far behind the S&P 500 stock market index. That’s an anomaly for Buffett. He’s handily outperformed the S&P 500 for decades, endearing himself to millions of investors along the way.
Nicholas Schneider is an American student who was studying in Wuhan, China. He said, “It’s like a ghost town, barely any people and cars. It’s a weird feeling. I feel like I’m in an apocalypse somehow.” Wuhan is a city of 11 million where the outbreak of the coronavirus began. Now it’s on
The year was 1990, and the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. The Berlin Wall was still in the process of being destroyed, and East and West Germany were set to reunify later in the year. Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February, and the South African government began talks
A Japanese woman was surprised when Hong Kong Express Airways required her to take a pregnancy test before boarding her flight. They made the poor woman sign a form indicating her body type was observed by staff to appear pregnant. The test proved she wasn’t. The woman was travelling to Saipan, the largest
Emma Gingerich doesn’t remember any joy in her childhood. She grew up without electricity or running water, and took only one bath a week. Education was so limited that to the best of her knowledge, the earth was flat. She didn’t even know how to speak fluent English, even though she grew up
[Editor’s note: This letter was written by Sovereign Man team member Joe Jarvis, who recently moved to Puerto Rico.] Local Puerto Ricans invariably tell me I’m overpaying on rent, and that I could have found a cheaper place to live. I’m sure that’s true. But somehow I’m not upset about my gorgeous view
The price of gold is up nearly $100 since Christmas, reaching around $1,575 per troy ounce as I write this letter. This most recent price bump is due to the panic over Iran. But the gold price is up nearly 20% over the last year, so there have obviously been plenty of other
In late 2002, about 17 years ago at this time of the year, I was a young Army officer deployed to the Middle East. It was just a few months before George W. Bush gave the order to invade Iraq, though all my fellow officers and I knew with 100% certainty that we
We just capped off a spectacular weekend in St. Lucia with members of our Total Access group to explore this country’s Citizenship-by-Investment program. I’ve written about Citizenship-by-Investment programs before; these are completely legal programs that exist in several countries where foreigners can invest a particular sum of money in a country and become
Most people might be surprised to learn that Robert De Niro has more passports than he has Academy Awards. Come to think of it… most people probably have more passports (one), than they have Academy Awards (zero). But De Niro has two Oscars: the first for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part
Elon Musk is one of the most famous entrepreneurs in the world. But if he hadn’t been able to make his way to Silicon Valley as a young man, it’s possible that you would have never heard of him. Musk was born and raised in South Africa. And while South Africa is a
If you were a southern Italian peasant around the turn of the 20th century, your life was pretty rough. The feudal system had officially ended with the unification of Italy a few decades earlier. But most laborers probably didn’t notice the difference. The vast majority of southern Italians were farm workers. But the
Bernd Lünser was by all accounts a popular, promising student. He was studying civil engineering at the State Engineering School of Architecture in West Berlin in 1961. Unfortunately, he lived in East Berlin. And during the summer break of that year, the Berlin Wall was completed, shutting off access from Western administered West
Warren Buffett has famously quipped that his preferred holding period for an investment is “forever.” Once he zeroes in on a great business and buys a huge stake in the company, he never wants to sell. Ever. This concept of long-term investing is simple to understand but hard to put into practice. We