recent Mid-Year Update, which offers a valuable look at an eventful last six months and his expectations for the second half of 2014 and beyond as we get closer to the end of QE .
For more reading from Jack, I suggest his piece on the opportunities for investing in credit, “The Illiquidity Premium.” Qualified investors interested in learning more can register for the Mauldin Circle to get access to the exclusive Altegris private placement platform.
Dallas, San Antonio, and Washington DC
I am enjoying my respite from travel. Right now I’m not scheduled to get on a plane until the middle of September, when I go to the Texas Hill Country near San Antonio for the Casey Research Summit, which you should check out if you’re looking for a great conference this fall.
I did work in a quick trip to Washington DC at the end of the month; but now I’m home again for a spell, although partners and friends are beginning to notice that I have some time in my schedule, and I’m sure that New York will have to appear on my schedule at least once in the next two months.
We celebrated my mother’s 97th birthday party last night here at the apartment, and many of her friends and family showed up. My brother told me she had been focused on the party for the last month or so, and she was certainly happy with everything last night. Her regular nurses (who come to her home to see her) told me that she is getting visibly weaker, and I was already seeing that; but she was certainly “all there” for her party. There were a few poignant moments. “I would hug you, but I can’t make my arms work,” she told Tiffani. And indeed she has lost much of her arm movement. The ambulance service brought her in on a stretcher and moved her around the apartment to visit with her friends.
I have to confess the evening made a bit of an emotional impact on me, as I realized when I was going to bed that evening. I really lost my desire to have a conversation, lost in my own thoughts. Mother is “only” some 32.867 years older than I am, and unless there are some significant advantages in biotechnological medicine, I may not make it past 100, either. So the final future was brought home in a fairly stark way. Perhaps, I thought to myself, part of the reason that I so strongly believe in a biotechnological revolution happening in my lifetime is that I want/need it to happen. But then, I considered again the data that tell me it really is happening, and I got up the next morning to go dance with The Beast (my trainer) at 8:15.
Sunday I go to deep East Texas to visit the weekend home/ranch of my good friend Monty Bennett. Monty grew up in the hotel business and runs a large hotel REIT and associated companies. He gives me insights into the hotel business, and we talk macro. Turns out he is an economics junkie, and I am part of his “fix.” I keep running into successful businessmen who also pay attention to macroeconomics and how it affects the business cycle of their particular worlds. The hotel gig is about as countercyclical as you can get. While that makes intuitive sense, it does require a certain type of contrarian nature to be successful at hotel investing. And that nature becomes suspicious of bubbles. So we have some fodder for an interesting conversation this week as we drive through Monty’s ranch, which is really an international wildlife preserve. He has all sorts of exotic deer and sheep and such from all continents of the world – ibex, gemsbok, sable antel ope, red kangaroos, and something called a Barasingha deer, which I really hope to see. And all sorts of sheep that I have only read about and seen in National Geographic magazines.
Have a great week. And enjoy each and every moment you have.
Your enjoying his summer analyst,
John Mauldin
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