From Wheat Fields to Wall Street

I spent last week helping my brother wind up the summer harvest on the family farm in the southeastern corner of Washington state, affectionately referenced by The National Geographic as “A Paradise called the Palouse.”

Sitting in the combine’s air-conditioned cab and watching the reel go round-and-round for 12 hours a day is just about the best form of meditation there is.   

It got me to thinking of my Coffeehouse Investor journey of the past 25 years, and how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Twenty-five years ago, in my first book, I wrote –

“. . . one of the requirements for a successful journey is to ignore the “stock market experts” of today in much the same way Aristotle ignored the “flat world” experts” 2,400 years ago when suggesting that the earth was round.”

Twenty-five years ago, in the midst of the dot-com era of fast trading and quick profits, Coffeehouse Investors began a far different investment journey to building wealth – of capturing the market’s return through low-cost index and passively managed mutual funds and attending to one’s financial plan instead of the markets. 

Today, investors across the nation are beginning to see the wisdom of our simple approach to building wealth, as pointed out last week in Jeff Sommer’s timely New York Times article.

I’m not saying it is easy, but two decades from now I suspect you will look back, gratified that you stayed the course in today’s volatile markets.

Planning in the Midst of Uncertainty

Does the market's current volatility have you worried? Let's work together and strategize a plan that provides peace of mind, regardless of the market's performance.