A friend of mine emailed me last week with an article that forecast more bad news. And he, I think tongue in cheek, suggested that I must be doing cartwheels because the bad news for the housing market was great news to me. That got me thinking again about the power of perspective. You see, a great many of the historically grand fortunes in this country were made by people going against the grain. Buying when…
The Myth of “Win-Win”
I’m sure that you have seen the news reports out of Ohio during the last week. First one, then a second Federal Judge dismissed foreclosure proceedings because the lenders “failed to prove that they owned the properties they were trying to seizeâ€. That’s a complicated way of saying that the paperwork is screwed up. (If you’ve ever worked at a big company, you know that this is the rule not the exception.) More importantly though,…
Can You Afford to Lose Any MORE Ground?
This is the performance of your retirement account while you have been investing in the stock market over the last six months. Look familiar?  Take a closer look at the chart – over the last six months the market has been down – despite those huge peaks that you see. That means a negative ROI – and the fact that you probably lost money – and lost ground. Is this going to impact when you can…
Well What About Michigan?
I have received some interesting responses to my “10 Things†post. When I wrote it my personal feeling was that there would be a massive “piling on†because things seem to be so bad here, and that I would be taken to task because I went so easy on the area. To my surprise quite the opposite occurred. The responses were overwhelmingly positive. Not only that, but they were upbeat and optimistic about the future…
Brace Yourselves
I have been staring is disbelief at an AP story this morning. Now I know that the AP is not up to the journalistic standards of accuracy as, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post. But the fact is their stuff gets widely distributed and widely read. The first line is the report was: “Consumers, battered by a steep downturn in housing and a severe credit crunch, slowed their spending growth in September…
10 Things
I’ve been talking to a lot of out of state investors lately, and the subject of weaknesses and opportunities for this region comes up every time. While I know that any discussion of substance on this would take a while, I though that I would put together a couple of lists off the top of my head. If you think there’s something missing off of either of the lists send me an email at list@MichProps.com.…