For our Clients, Colleagues, and Friends, | |
- This Bureau of Labor Statistics table shows month-over-month total mortgage industry employment. There should be one clear message: If you figure that loan volume is down 50% to 60%, yet mortgage employment is down only 35.6% from its peak, mortgage employment should also be down 50% to 70%. This disconnect means only one thing: The industry needs a lot more layoffs.
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Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there. You're much appreciated for all you've done, and look! At least one son speaks for all us for your good words to live by: Great Advice from a Dad to His Son.
- You may think of stocks that pay dividends as something for grandmothers and retired people, but you’d be wrong. Going back to 1960, 85% of the cumulative total return of the S&P 500 Index can be attributed to reinvested dividends and the power of compounding.
- If you want to buy a stock whose dividends you can count on, you should consider Proctor & Gamble. It’s paid a dividend every year since 1890, and it’s raised the dividend every single year for the last 68 years. That was when Eisenhower was just starting his second term as president, in 1955.
- P&G's products are sold in over 180 countries. Joe told me that once he visited an open market near a small hamlet on the shores of Inle Lake in Burma. Farmers brought their fresh vegetables to sell there, but as remote as this was, someone had a table selling P&G products like Crest toothpaste and Charmin toilet paper. And Inle Lake is the only place in the world where fisherman row with their feet.
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- Stanford University arrested 13 pro-Hamas protesters the other day. They were all suspended, and those scheduled to graduate won’t be allowed to do so.
- Mexico’s new president got her PhD from Berkeley (which is probably why it's no surprise that she wants to eliminate many of the market reforms that made Mexico prosper in recent years), and interestingly, she is Jewish. That’s interesting because Mexico is close to 98% Roman Catholic.
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Values of San Francisco high-rise office buildings have crashed, with many selling at 25% to 30% of what they were valued at just a few years ago. As evidence that markets correct on their own, the new owners paid so little for these buildings that they lowered rents dramatically, and guess what happened? Companies have been moving back into Financial District office towers and signing big leases. A big percentage of them are AI companies.
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Wretched excess: The private members-only airport lounges are getting fancier. Air France now offers 500-square-foot suites that include a living area, bedroom, outdoor patio, and a shower.
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QAnon redux: A UC Davis poll showed that 9% of Americans believe that the government, the media, and the big banks are controlled by Satan-worshipping pedophiles. And whatever happened to the QAnon phenomenon? Was it just one fabulist whack-job? Enquiring minds want to know.
- Even if you’re not a baseball fan, you may have heard the name Ty Cobb and heard that he had the highest lifetime batting average of any player ever, at .366. Number two was Rogers Hornsby at .358, and number three was Shoeless Joe Jackson at .356.
- Here are four consecutive seasons Cobb had, from 1910 through 1913:
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How to be a moron and turn a $99 investment into a $740,000 loss. Oakland A’s pitcher Michael Kelly bet $99 on ten baseball games when he was with an Astros minor league team. He just got caught and was suspended for a year without pay. His salary this year was $740,000, and in round numbers, he lost $7,400 on each dollar he bet.
- The U.S. Congress has an honors system for food and lodging on their expense accounts. They don’t have to provide receipts. Can you think of a single company in the private sector that would allow this?
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A really good movie on Netflix is Hit Man. Watch it, and tell us what you think.
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Occam's Razor is the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the best one. Here’s a perfect example: We started watching a documentary on why MoviePass failed. This was a company where you’d pay $9.95 per month and get unlimited access to any movie theater in town. If you were so inclined, you could pay your $9.95 and then watch two movies every day for a month. That would save you between $600 and $900 a month. The documentary went into all the mistakes the company made, but they missed the big point: Not enough people go the movies anymore, no matter how cheap you make it. And that, people, is Occam’s Razor.
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Occam, by the way, was a Franciscan monk named William of Ockham in 14th century England.
- So, you think your mortgage company is over-regulated? If you’re a not particularly large bank with a state charter, you’re probably regulated by the Federal Reserve, the state you’re headquartered in, the FDIC, and the CFPB.
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When movie director Roger Corman died a few weeks ago, Joe asked San Francisco Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle if he had a favorite Corman movie. He wrote back, “I’ve never heard of him.” Seriously? Corman directed or produced hundreds of movies and launched the careers of Peter Bogdanovich, Ron Howard, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, and Martin Scorsese.
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To end our newsletter on a high note, do yourself a favor and watch this wonderful (and short) video of great music and great dancing. It starts out with a short scene from Swan Lake, the greatest of all ballets, and takes you on a tour of some of the best scenes from some of the best movies: Let’s Dance.
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A few more topics you could have people discuss at your next senior manager’s meeting or Board retreat: (1) If your bank or mortgage company were a person, how would you describe it to someone else? (2) What is your bank or mortgage company’s value proposition? (3) If you were privately owned but wanted to go public, what would be the three or four things that would turn off potential investors?
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"Helping lenders increase revenue, lower costs, and better manage risk." | |
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“Graduates, faculty, parents, creditors…”
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