Francesca's HODL'INGS

I can't help myself when it comes to train-wreck stocks. Francesca's has gotten smoked over pretty much any time period you can think of. It's down 78% from its IPO price many years ago, 79% from its price five years ago, 68% over the last year, and 41% over the last six months. It's safe to say that there are no momentum investors excited about this one.

Boy Plunger

I can't figure out why so many people quote Jesse Livermore. So it was with that in mind that I read Jesse Livermore - Boy Plunger: The Man Who Sold America Short in 1929.

Ready Player One

Ready Player One: A Novel is an absolute page-turner. I had a hard time putting it down, and I probably understood less than 10% of 1980s pop culture references on which the book is based.

Karsan Value Funds: 2017 Q4 Results

Karsan Value Funds (KVF) is a value-oriented fund, as described here. Due to securities regulations, the fund is not open to the public at this time. Should that change in the future, there will be an announcement on this site.

Barbed Wire

A book about barbed wire sounds pretty boring, but it's not really about wire, but about people. People have sought to control their environments, and the invention and spread of barbed wire resulted in unmatched control over animals and other humans. Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity is a history book about how people came to control environments they never could before.

Hibbett Sports

Three months ago, Hibbett Sports' valuation was downright silly, as I opined here. I still think it's undervalued, but it's within a range in which I can't put a ton of confidence in that assessment. As such, I've taken my money off the table.

The Attention Merchants

I was so impressed by Tim Wu's The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires that I decided to give another of his books, The Attention Merchants, a read. It provided a terrific history of advertising: where it came from, how it has evolved, and how technology now gives it unfettered access to our brains.