MarketWatch article:"What I've Learned From the Market Bubbles"

Quick hit:  check out "What I've Learned From the Market Bubbles" on MarketWatch.  Very quick read, and a nice macro view of a repeating bubble trend.

Lunch

It's almost always enjoyable to connect with someone over food or coffee.  I really like sitting down with someone over lunch, learning more about the individual's purpose, work, and what makes him or her tick. There are lots of reasons to connect with others, and each type of interaction has its own benefit:

• History. The other person's experience reminds me of things I've done before, maybe not as well, or maybe better


• The Now. We're experiencing the same pains or joys, and compare notes and next moves


• Virtual Travel. I get to take a vicarious journey to an situation or place I've never been (skydiving, anyone?).


• Improvement. We philosophize or have a mental jousting of sorts, sharpening one another with competing logic and new information

I have a very strong preference for the other person to select where we'll have lunch. Very.  There are specific reasons for this:

Better Speakers, Better Leaders, Better Communicators

I've just completed a term as president of my local Toastmasters club, Gateway to Speaking Excellence. During my year in office, the theme of the club was the same as the title of this blog post. When asked to describe Toastmasters, I say something like this:  “Toastmasters is a safe-to-succeed, safe-to-fail environment in which we practice becoming better speakers, better leaders, and better communicators every single day.”

Wondering about the cheesy name?

Insubordination and followership

Browsing Bloomberg the other day I found Rosabeth Moss Kanter's review of Obama's firing of General McChrystal from a management and leadership perspective.  It was a reprint from a Harvard Business Review blog.  HBR has a couple of other posts around the firing that might be interesting, including this one and this one.

Two energy giants

With all of the emotional charge swirling around BP as of late, I thought it might be interesting to look at a couple of other players in the energy markets.

BP is sitting at just under $30 a share and market capitalization just under $93B, about half of where it was pre-Gulf-oil-spill crisis.  The dividend has been canceled for the first three quarters of 2010, and it's being reported in Bloomberg and elsewhere that a cash injection could be coming in the next few days to stave off takeover bids.

The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

Malcolm Gladwell, a writer at The New Yorker magazine, has become better known for his books than his articles in recent years.  He has written a string of bestsellers in the new millenium:  The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw.  Gladwell fittingly started with The Tipping Point, a view into understanding change.