Kennon-Green & Co. Fiduciary Financial Advisor, Wealth Management, Global Value Investing

Jul142015
Joshua and Aaron Colgate-Palmolive Toothpaste

Colgate-Palmolive: A Real World Examination of the Limitations of the P/E Ratio

Stocks, Valuation25 Comments

Back in 2011, I did a 20-year case study of Colgate-Palmolive. Global events have conspired in such a way that it can now serve as a perfect illustration of a valuation conundrum: While not cheap, Colgate-Palmolive is significantly cheaper for a long-term owner than the price-to-earnings ratio alone would have you believe. In fact, despite having what appears to be a 26.54 p/e ratio, it’s slightly undervalued to its private market value could you get your hands on the entire empire. It’s a rare thing to be able to talk about a gem like this under conditions such as these so I’m not going to let the opportunity pass. Dust off your powdered wigs, take out your walking cane, and travel back with me to post-Revolutionary America.

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Jul112015
Web Server Rack

We Survived an Influx of Roughly 187,000 Reddit Users Caused By an Old Post on Secret Coca-Cola Millionaires

Announcements16 Comments

As tends to happen once every year or two, the unexpected “make the front page of Reddit” event occurred last night, in the midst of the site renovations; an inopportune time but I’ll take it. Aaron and I were watching Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell on iTunes at around 2 a.m. when I saw the MySQL server straining under an incredible amount of requests.  It was the old post about the secret Coca-Cola millionaires in Quincy, Florida.  Something like 90 requests a second were slamming the data center up in Michigan.  Traffic source: Reddit.  Short investigation later, turns out it became the number one post of the “Today I Learned” subreddit and made the overall front page of the site.

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Jul22015
Obergefell v Hodges Supreme Court Ruling Marriage Equailty Victory

Marriage Equality Declared a Fundamental, Constitutional Right: My Personal Reaction to Obergefell v. Hodges

My Life, Politics, Religion & Culture59 Comments

Marriage Equality Declared a Fundamental, Constitutional Right: My Personal Reaction to Obergefell v. Hodges It’s been almost a week since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges declaring marriage equality a fundamental right under both the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. I’ve…

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Jun242015
Horne v Department of Agriculture Supreme Court Case

Horne v. Department of Agriculture: Supreme Court Hands Down Major Win for Constitutional Property Rights

Politics, Religion & Culture16 Comments

You may never look at raisins the same way again.  The highest court in the United States just handed individual citizens a major win in terms of personal property rights, striking down one of FDR’s New Deal programs by depriving the Federal Government of a power it has illegitimately exercised for decades.  The case was called Horne et al., v. Department of Agriculture.  It stemmed from The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, which gave the Secretary of Agriculture authority to issue “marketing orders” for the purpose of maintaining stable markets in specific commodities.

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Jun122015
The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

Lessons from The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

History12 Comments

It is January 15th, 1919.  You’re in Boston, Massachusetts shortly before lunchtime.  Sitting at 529 Commercial Street is a three-year old tanker owned by the Purity Distilling Company, a subsidiary of United States Industrial Alcohol.  At 50 feet high, housed within the steel body of this five-story behemoth is 26,000,000 pounds of sticky, sweet molasses; one of the most popular sweeteners…

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