technology

Work from Where?

woman at desk with feet up working with paper, pen, and a computer in a home office

Location, location, location—this real estate cliché is now dominating conversations about the changing world of work. Many businesses are learning a thing or two about the value of where work happens, and many leaders have said they intend to keep at least part of their workforce remote even after we’re through the limitations of COVID-19.

We’ve been thinking a lot about locale in recent years. I picked up a snowbird routine in 2010, and we launched our digital presence in earnest in 2015. Some of our “office” staff are rarely in the office—the one at 228 Main Street, at least.

From these experiences, we’ve learned a lesson that many business leaders are grappling with now: the fundamental question may not be where work needs to happen, but how it needs to happen. We’ve even shared with you about what we call the “URL–IRL connection,” the way our work online and our work in-person go together.

Yes, right now, the pandemic is putting some clear constraints on the question of location, but it would be a pity to come away from this challenging time with the wrong lesson. It’s not that WFH (“working from home”) is universally superior to working in a company office setting. It’s not that an office is superior to a WFH arrangement.

As Forbes contributor Laurel Farrer explained, what would happen if we focused on work as a thing we do and not a place we go? The short answer is that we make decisions based on the fundamentals. What do I need to get my work done?

Clients, we will continue to adapt—to changes in our lives, to changes in your needs, and to the world around us. Wherever life takes us, our work keeps us connected to you. And we are so grateful for that. Write or call anytime.

How Does It Sound Now?

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They say country music great Chet Atkins was playing a gig in a small Nashville club. After finishing a song, an audience member said “Man, that old guitar sounds great.” Atkins placed the guitar on its stand and replied, “How does it sound now?”

I’m reminded of this story as we review available technology for financial planning and investing. Some approaches to investing rely entirely on technology. Your supposed “risk tolerance” can be reduced to a number, which correlates to a pre-determined set of investments chosen by an algorithm, a computer program.

The financial planning process may be practiced on a robotic basis as well. One may enter data into a program or website, and get back a recommendation as to how much money must be saved or invested each month to reach one’s goals.

Oddly, sometimes even financial representatives function only as a conduit to get information from you to put into the machinery, and then deliver the outcome of the calculations back to you. The main function of the human in that case is to be a money-finder, not actually do any investment work or financial counseling.

Lots of colors in the pie chart and lots of pages in the financial plan can not replace the human touch. Understanding and clarifying what makes you tick, your purpose, your most heartfelt goals, these are things best left to real people. The dialogue, the discussion may be the most valuable part of the process.

Often we find many little things that might be improved by a slightly different approach. But few people care, unless they feel they are on track to meet the biggest thing on their list – their most cherished goal. It seems like the robotic approach has trouble understanding priorities.

I’m thinking that the guitar will always need a guitar player, and a usable financial plan will often need a planner. Of course we use technology to extend our reach and effectiveness, but its biggest blessing is in giving us more time to work with you, one on one.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

Content in this material is for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual..

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

Navigating Life

© Can Stock Photo / nicolasmenijes

I have never been what they call “an early adopter.” Even at the dawn of the personal computing age, my strategy was to figure out where the leading edge of technology was, and take two steps back. So it may not surprise you to know I am fairly new to the world of smart phone navigation.

The way those systems work reminds me of the way we approach life here at 228 Main:

1. Start where you are.
2. Proceed by way of your plans.
3. Arrive at your dreams.

When the phone maps a route for you, it never says “Gosh! There are a lot of problems where you are. It’s too far to go! Maybe you should wait for a better day to go.” It simply takes your location and starts to make plans.

Once underway, if you get off course, the phone figures out whether it is better to go back the way you came, or take a new route to the same goal. One way or the other, it wants you back on track. It won’t let you go mile after mile the wrong direction.

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will do. So one of the basic requirements is knowing your destination.

When we think about our work for you, there are many similarities. We begin by understanding where you are, your starting point. We invest time in learning your goals (or dreams), helping you clarify them if necessary. Where you are, where you want to go: it is about the same as using your phone to navigate.

Then we do the work. Sort out the best path to get you to your dreams. Check in and monitor it to make sure you are still on course. Provide midcourse corrections if needed. And communicate continuously with you.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

The Next Energy Revolution is Here!

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Back in 2017, we wrote about two trends that would interact to change the world. Declining costs of solar power generation, combined with declining costs of battery storage, would herald an energy revolution.

In a recent article, Bloomberg News suggests that solar and wind energy is more economical to build than coal or gas plants in two thirds of the world. Five years ago, this wasn’t the case anywhere.

New sources of energy have heralded remarkable periods of growth and prosperity in the past. Water and steam brought us into the modern era more than two centuries ago. Coal and petroleum pushed development beyond what anyone could have predicted, before their use became widespread.

The next energy revolution, solar and wind plus battery storage, will bring massive new opportunities – and threats to older technologies. We are thinking about ramifications for investors.

1. The demand for copper may rise, against a constrained supply.
2. Underdeveloped areas of the world may develop faster, since solar can be deployed on much smaller scales than big central generating plants using fossil fuels.
3. Cheaper electricity may encourage new uses, not yet dreamed of.
4. Incumbent electric utilities may find themselves with stranded assets in the form of obsolete plants and equipment.

No guarantees on any part of the future, of course. But it does seem to be unfolding as we expected a couple years ago.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

Content in this material is for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

Time and Space, Compressed

© Can Stock Photo / khunaspix

In his memoirs, Civil War general and president Ulysses S. Grant wrote about the first time he rode on a train. (When Grant was a young man, trains were a new technology.) Traveling overland at the unprecedented speed of 15 miles an hour, it seemed to him that time and space had been compressed.

In our age, one might have consecutive meals on opposite coasts. A journey that first took months, then weeks, then days, takes hours in the jet age.

Time is compressed in other ways, here in the 21st century.

• New forms of media let us interact at the speed of light with dozens or thousands of people, for less than the price of a stamp.

• Email and other forms of digital messaging allow communication between people who are never available at the same time. This represents quite a productivity boost over the days of telephone tag.

• Research begins with fingertips on keyboards, virtually everywhere, instead of with trips to the library.

Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. We had to effectively integrate these technologies into our business with you, and use them to maximum effect over the past few years.

21st century technologies have helped our old-fashioned conversations begin with more common ground, then go deeper into the topics in which you are interested. It seems to me we are closer now than ever before. This makes sense, if we are communicating more than we used to.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

Autonomy: Freedom, Independence…

© Can Stock Photo / RioPatuca

Dictionary definitions of autonomy talk about freedom and independence. This is fitting, when you think about what autonomous or self-driving vehicles (AV) are going to do for those who are unable to drive. And that is just part of the story.

In our society, a drivers license has long represented freedom and independence – autonomy, in other words. One of the toughest issues in dealing with friends or elders with diminishing abilities has been that moment when driving a car becomes a threat to one’s self and others. And some among us have never been able to drive, due to injury, sickness, or congenital conditions.

Progress has been made in the development of autonomous cars. Within the next few years, we are likely to see the first widely available autonomous vehicles. This will make it possible for those who cannot drive to live autonomously, independently, on their own. Delivery of goods and services may be more widely available than ever before. Getting to a medical appointment or store will be routine for nearly anyone, in any condition.

An even larger benefit might come from a reduction in motor vehicle injuries and fatalities. When a self-driving car is implicated in an accident, everybody hears about it – the news covers it extensively. Yet these incidents rarely happen. And each month, more people die in US traffic accidents in conventional vehicles than were killed on 9/11.

From an investment standpoint, it is possible to own stock in several of the leading approaches to autonomous vehicles. A significant fraction of the value of one of the traditional auto companies is in its autonomous vehicle division. With another company, you gain ownership in an aggressive AV development program along with the leading internet search business, among other things. These are established, profitable companies. The third is a somewhat controversial, newer company that has yet to book a full-year profit, as it works on building an electric vehicle business.

In the investment advisory accounts we manage through LPL Financial, we have chosen a number of paths to gain exposure to the evolution of the automobile. This diversified approach will hopefully bear fruit in the years to come. No guarantees, of course.

Just as in the 1990’s, it was difficult to understand the pervasive changes the internet would bring to everyday life, autonomous vehicles may present a transformation as sweeping. We humans tend to believe things will be as they are now – it is hard to visualize change. But we believe change is coming.

We will continue to study and watch. Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

Content in this material is for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss. There is no guarantee that a diversified portfolio will enhance overall returns or outperform a non-diversified portfolio. Diversification does not protect against market risk.

Making Sense of the Data Flood

© Can Stock Photo / SergeyNivens

In the 21st century, information seems to be a thousand times more abundant than we could have dreamed of just a few decades ago. An insight into the olden days may be the best way to illustrate this.

When I first became qualified to work with investment securities, I would maintain a list of topics to research. It might be a specific company or an investment product, or some aspect of the economy. Day by day, new items would go on the list.

Every other week, I spent a morning in the library. Stock reports from S&P Marketscope and ValueLine were available there, in large binders. The financial newspapers and other reference works were available, too. I would chew through the items on my list all morning, then make telephone calls that afternoon and evening to report my findings.

No internet, no email, no cell phones.

Now, of course, we interact with economists and research analysts and portfolio managers in real time via webinars, Twitter, and conference calls. Research on thousands of companies is at our fingertips. Data and analysis subscriptions supplement the expert resources made available by LPL Financial and our other institutional partners.

Instead of writing research topics down in a notebook to be studied in the library days later, we often can respond to client inquiries almost instantly, and always quickly.

The key element in our approach is not the flood of information available. By itself, that flood would drown anybody. Instead, it is in the experience and knowledge we bring, in order to understand the narratives and themes lurking in the data. Context and perspective is vital.

When you have read thousands of pages of research, annual reports, and SEC filings, you develop an understanding of what is pertinent, and what may be disregarded. Greg Leibman, in his ninth year here, does a lot of the heavy lifting.

We are fortunate to be alive in this day and age, able to take advantage of the opportunities to operate more effectively on your behalf. Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

Self-Driving Skeptics

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We’ve been studying the evolution of the automobile for several years. One of the major trends is toward autonomous vehicles, or self-driving cars. While the future is unknowable, some interesting observations can be made.

Folks around beautiful downtown Louisville, out in the heartland, tend to have a tough time picturing the use of self-driving vehicles. Meanwhile, residents of Boston or Los Angeles seem to have a different take.

Autopilot for navigating a few minutes in Nebraska between Louisville and Weeping Water, or Cedar Creek and Plattsmouth, especially if gravel roads are involved, is not exactly a big deal. Not much time is involved, and the complexity of the driving may be beyond self-driving capabilities for many years.

But if you spend an hour commuting on I-93 in Boston or on the 405 in metro LA, being able to go hands-free from onramp to offramp is a game-changer. This kind of capability is available now in certain Tesla models, and we’ve been able to speak with people who have experienced it.

One basically may recover an hour or more for replying to correspondence, making calls, texting, reading, or working on documents. To be able to do this during a commute instead of during the first hour in the office or at home in the evening enhances work and life.

Small town friends who get to the big city and have a chance to drive in hands-free mode admit that it is disconcerting at first when you remove hands and feet from the controls. But within a short time they begin to feel that the car is a safe driver.

Other automakers may be close to introducing similar systems. We won’t pretend to know what the pace of adoption will be, nor the growth in capabilities over the years ahead. But it is clear that self-driving technology has changed the way some people live and work already.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

Change is Changing

© Can Stock Photo / PerseoMedusa

When we think about our lives, our work, and our leisure, it seems evident that the pace of change is accelerating. This is not a new idea. A 1970 best-selling book by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Future Shock, first brought this idea into public consciousness—they argued that the rate of change was overwhelming for many people. The future was coming too quickly. And since then, things have only gotten faster.

A speaker spent time talking about change at the recent LPL Financial national conference. One of the lessons of change is that knowing about it is not good enough, but instead, “You have to do something about it.”

We think about the evolution of the economy and the markets, the changing face of law and regulation, industry trends that affect us, and the unfolding needs of you, our clients. There are many sources of change!

Knowing that adaptability is the new superpower, as White says, we also think about how we survive change, or better yet, thrive in it. How do we “do something about it”? The answer, for us, has a number of parts.

• Focusing on your wellbeing helps us sort out what we need to do in seeking to improve your position in the years ahead. You know our theory has long been the better off you are, the better off we will ultimately be. Looking at change through this lens brings clarity about what we need to do.

• Planning to work to age 92 has perhaps given us the perspective of a younger, more vibrant enterprise. When others might be coasting toward retirement, seeking an exit, we are gearing up and planning for the decades ahead.

• Having a sophisticated institutional partner like LPL Financial is a boon. It feels as if they are creating the future of digital communications together with us. They are at the leading edge of new media in terms of support and training, in our opinion. Few colleagues employ these tools to the extent we do, to keep our connection to you.

The unfolding future, change and all, feels as if it were built for us. We like having the same story for everyone. Communicating at the speed of light is good for you and for us. And it is as gratifying as ever to work with you as you strive toward your goals.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

Pioneer Mortality and The Osborne 1

© Can Stock Photo / scowill

In April 1981, Adam Oborne debuted the very first portable computer. His company was the fastest growing in Silicon Valley. You can see how popular the idea of portable computing got by visiting any coffee shop any day of the week. Laptops, tablets and smart phones are all descendants of the Osborne 1.

Yet Osborne Computer declared bankruptcy thirty months later, and disappeared completely by 1986. This is fairly common in the history of commerce, the story of the pioneer that did not survive.

Portable computing as a concept was separate and distinct from its first manifestation, the Osborne 1 computer. This is a key to understanding subsequent manias based on pioneering technologies or concepts.

We humans are a creative, inventive species. There always seems to be an exciting concept or something new that will really change things. Steamships, railroads, petroleum, airplanes, automobiles, telephones, radio, television, cell phones…something new is always on the horizon. These things have created new ways of doing things and reshaped our lives and society.

But with each of these revolutionary ideas, there was a difference between the successful path of the idea, and what happened to the first manifestations or demonstrations of that idea.

The Osborne 1 computer was a twenty-four pound beast with no battery, a three inch screen, and now-laughable technical specifications. The concept of portable computing was worthwhile, revolutionary, and eventually changed the way we live and work. But the first manifestation did not even turn out to be sustainable or successful.

Just as the key uses of the internet took time to emerge and evolve, the most important uses of any new idea probably do not exist yet. In the internet boom of the late 1990’s and early 2000, some investors made the mistake of confusing the powerful concept with its initial manifestations. It did not end well for them.

There are powerful ideas circulating today based on revolutionary concepts. They may eventually reshape our lives, institutions, and society. When you come across one of these intriguing situations, please remember the lesson of the Osborne 1. Clients, if you would like to discuss this or anything else in more detail, please email us or call.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.