Investing

🪞 A Reflection on Compound Interest Compound interest is often called the “eighth wonder of the world.” At first, it seems like a throwaway phrase, something to stick in a finance textbook. But when I think about it deeply, I realize that compounding is less about money and more about time. The principle is simple: today’s growth becomes tomorrow’s foundation. A dollar earns a penny, and next year both the dollar and the penny are at work. Repeat that cycle for long enough, and the results stop being linear—they start becoming extraordinary. What once felt slow and dull accelerates into something almost unstoppable. ...

“If only I had bought at the bottom.” It’s a thought nearly every investor has had at some point. The allure of perfect timing is powerful: buy low, sell high, and retire rich. The trouble is, nobody—not even seasoned professionals—consistently calls market tops and bottoms. What ordinary investors can do, however, is embrace a disciplined, proven strategy that turns the market’s swings into a friend rather than a foe. That strategy is dollar-cost averaging. ...

I used to believe investing was something you did while you worked. You built a nest egg, retired, and lived off it. Simple. But when retirement arrived, I quickly learned the story doesn’t end there. Retirement isn’t the finish line—it’s the start of a new chapter. And in this chapter, investing takes on a different purpose. For me, Social Security is the backbone of retirement. It’s steady, predictable, and deeply reassuring. I also receive book royalties, though they’re so modest they don’t change the math. Still, those checks remind me that something I created lives on, even if only in small ways. ...

Donald Trump didn’t invent American interest in Greenland, but he did put it on billboards. In August 2019, after Danish leaders called the idea of selling the island “absurd,” he canceled a planned state visit and posted the now-famous meme—“I promise not to do this to Greenland”—over a Photoshopped Trump Tower jutting from a colorful coastal town. The theatrics were pure Trump; the target was not. Greenland sits on the seam between North America and Eurasia, with critical minerals underfoot and the U.S. military’s northernmost base at Pituffik guarding the polar approach. That mix of spectacle and strategic logic is the through-line of Trump’s Greenland story. (Reuters, The Guardian) ...

🪞 Reflection We Always Have Options It’s easy to forget we have choices. The pace of life, the pressure of obligations, and the sheer weight of habit can convince us that the path we’re on is the only path available. But the truth is simpler and more freeing: we always have options. Sometimes those options are small, almost invisible. Choosing to go for a walk instead of doom-scrolling. Reaching for water instead of another cup of coffee. Deciding to listen rather than rush to reply. These are choices, too—small turns in the day that can shift our mood, our energy, even our outlook. ...

Last Saturday, as President Trump celebrated his 79th birthday with a military parade in Washington, D.C.—funded by private donors at a reported cost of $25–45 million—something far larger and more democratic was unfolding across the country. In all 50 states, in U.S. territories, and even abroad, the No Kings movement organized what may be the largest single-day protest in American history. Backed by more than 200 organizations—including Indivisible, the 50501 Movement, ACLU, MoveOn, Working Families Party, and the American Federation of Teachers—the protest united an estimated 4 to 6 million people across more than 2,100 locations. ...