KitchenFinances

So for this first foray into writing about financial markets I will use this first article as a prologue. My opening scroll consists of things that I find interesting and things that I have spent the better half of 2 years learning deeply about from people far more wealthy and credentialed than me. However, the value I bring is I have digested this market information and I believe I understand it enough to relay it to the average person and in some ways talk to those who think they understand how our modern economy works. Many remember the movements that started up right around the 2007-2008 housing market bubble crash. We had Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party Movement. Both movements instinctively knew the system is rigged, its a pay to play system for the elite on Wall Street and in Washington DC. However along comes the 2016 presidential run and Donald Trump (then candidate, currently president) would talk about the economy as phony, that unemployment was really low because t...

McDonald’s seems to constantly come under fire, sometimes for reasons which seem wholly idiotic (Szechuan Sauce, anybody?) and other times by their own pitfalls (removing fries from Happy Meals, consequently turning them into Sad Meals). Most fast food chains are mired in controversy—which is simply the nature of the beast—but a new conundrum could prove severely detrimental to the Golden Arches. Adapting a fast food business model to yield maximum profits from picky millennials can be tricky, as more and more young adults stray away from Big Macs in lieu of healthier options. Besides a late night caviar for potheads, the slew of greasy options McDonald’s serves up doesn’t hold much worth as Mad Greens, Noodles and Company, Chipotle, etc. all gain larger niche footholds in our diets. However, burger joints took steps to adapt—in this case, the integration of salads into the McDonald’s menu in 2005 . This all seemed fine and well; although salads make up less than 3% of total reven...

Editor's Note: This is a guest blog from Ben Virgin, our twitter enemy/best friend. We reached out in an effort to diversify our content and takes because diversification is pretty much always a good thing. Enjoy. Ben Virgin 17 July 2018 George Bush Still Sucks Hello everyone.  My name is Ben, and the StockKitchen team approached me about writing a couple of short pieces for their blog.  I don’t have a cool kitchen nickname or anything, but I hope you enjoy my work. It seems like everyone who touches the Trump presidency falls victim to a tragic, Shakespearean end.  That is, people willing to attach their names to Trump to further some personal agenda usually get what they want, but at the cost of their dignity and humanity.  The most recent example I can think of is former EPA chief Scott Pruitt: he may have gotten away with cartoonish corruption , but at the very least he has had to resign and his name will forever be synonymous with cartoonish corr...

Welcome to the trashcan! Some of what I post may be absolute garbage, some may have some half decent insight. Regardless, feel free to comment, argue, or toss out any other trash you have. Stockitchen writers are huge fans of music, but no song catches us more than C.W. McCall’s, “Convoy”. Written by McCall and Chip Davis in 1975, nothing embodies trucking culture quite like “Convoy” does. Inspiring timeless trucker rebellion films such as the 1977 classic, Smokey and the Bandit. (If you haven’t seen it, it is a must watch).   via GIPHY There are some hilarious quotes you can pull from this song and use in your day to day life. I’m going to break it down for you right here: [CB radio chatter] CB or Citizen Band Radio was popular among truckers. They had a selection of 40 channels with which truckers would communicate with each other. During the 1973 oil crisis, the U.S. government imposed a nationwide 55 mph speed limit as causing a national fuel shortage....

The Net Externalities of Dogs and Cats A Stockitchen Economics Publication Abstract In today's pet market, there are two major players families choose from when purchasing.  We are talking about dogs and cats.  An ageless debate, right up their with Jordan and Lebron (respect Kobe's five).  In this study, I intend to analyze the qualitative economic externalities provided by in each of the dog and cat markets, and to propose policy solutions to move the market quantity and price closer to allocative efficiency, to better manage our resources.  I ignore minor pets, such as fish, reptiles, etc. because there third party impacts after an economic transaction are negligible and therefore needless to analyze.  So, in this paper, I will show that the dog market has a net positive externality and the the cat market a negative one, and propose how to fix these departures from allocative efficiency, decreasing market deadweight loss. Background To use net...

In 2016, if you asked any budding young man what their top 3 favorite sources of online video were, they were bound to mention Netflix in their ranking (the other 2 need not be named). For the majority of the 2010s, Netflix served as the proprietary eponym for watching movies online and/or canoodling with a romantic partner. However, shareholders beware: Netflix stock took a sharp plummet and lost over 13% of its valuation by the closing bell, opening at 346.95 this morning. For your average Joe, or in our case, canoodler, this is pretty scary. So why is Netflix laying a bigger egg than the Atlanta Falcons in the 4th Quarter? If you dig a little deeper, it’s pretty easy to tell that Netflix is going sour. My beef with Netflix started in April 2017 when they removed seasons 1-8 of House M.D. , which I first thought was some sort of cruel April Fool’s joke. However, after subsequently removing Futurama , Family Guy , and most dastardly of all, FX’s The League , it became cle...

Some may know that Stockitchen's partners are huge coffee people and I am certainly to be counted amongst those ranks.  Since coffee continues to be a focus for us, I thought I would write a blog power ranking my favorite cups of coffee.  Let's get into it: 5.  Any coffee with some sort of personal name in the blend name. Major Dickason's Blend is my favorite mass-market coffee, from Peet's Coffee. It is a damn good coffee but it has an even better name.  I don't even know who the Major (is he even real) is but he sounds pretty cool so I love to be associated.  Sir Shackleton's Stout is maybe the very best whole bean coffee I have ever purchased.  It is from Moka Joe, a roaster out of Anacortes, Washington. Phenomenal coffee.  The moral of the story is I have never been led astray by a coffee named after a person, real or fictional. 4.  Coffee from a Polish mug. Best mugs out there are made by the Polish and it isn't up for debat...

Quote: " Lighthouses rule. You don’t like the lighthouse, you suck!" Today's quote of the day is from the youtube video "Drinking Out of Cups".  Hilarious video.  Lighthouses are indeed pretty cool.  That's all. -Crockpot

Quote: "If your values are rigid you can't really learn new facts." Today's quote of the day is from Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , a fictionalized biography/philosophy book.  I just finished the book recently, so I have been thinking about the content and this was an interesting line I took away.  I don't have a whole lot to say on the line except that, to me, flexibility in values shows thinking in process.  Flip flop on beliefs, stances, takes, whatever, that shows thinking.  Refusing to consider new information purely because of values handicaps a person's ability to learn.  Pirsig is spot on with this line if you ask me. Also, if you are interested in philosophy at all, this book is a fantastic read. -Crockpot

Quote: "Can I borrow your towel for a sec? My car just hit a water buffalo." Today's quote of the day is from the movie Fletch from 1985 with Chevy Chase.  Hilarious movie from one of my favorite comedic actors.  This movie is an ultimate feel good movie for me.  The line is a very typical Chase line, but his delivery on these types of jokes gets me every time.  If you haven't seen the movie, it is worth a watch.  That's all I got on this one, sneaking the quote of the day in just before midnight.  You can thank me for my service. -Crockpot

I'm sick and tired of Elon Musk and his most recent exploits with the Thai cave rescue just solidified my belief that he is a fraud.  Look, I get he is an amazing entrepreneur, smart, and does a lot for future looking engineering.  But, he is just out of hand at this point. For those who don't know the story, Musk designed some ridiculous child-sized submarine and brought it to Thailand to use for the rescue of the trapped soccer team in the cave.  It was not used because it was not practical.   Chiang Rai Gov. Narongsak Osotthanakorn, the head of the rescue efforts,  said of the device:  " Even though their equipment is technologically sophisticated, it doesn’t fit with our mission to go in the cave." The device:  Chalk that up as a failure for Musk. My overall problem with Musk is that he tweets out ridiculous ideas and plans and everyone gets all fired up about it, and there is ZERO follow through. Case One: The HyperLoo...

Yesterday, England lost in the the World Cup semis to Croatia and I am heartbroken.  This is just textbook English football in the World Cup at this point and usually I would laugh at their misfortune like I did at Joe Hart's howler in 2010: They have been snake bit at the World Cup since 1966.  For a country that cares so much about soccer like they do, it is kinda funny.  The reason this year is different, however, is that IT WAS COMING HOME.  If you haven't heard the song, it is below: This song came out in 2006 for the World Cup that year, a song of hope after all of England's failures.  Tell me you don't watch that video and immediately want to root for England.  This year, I think every Englishman believed it was coming home.  Watching the video after the loss, I dang near want to cry and I became a fan of English soccer for about two weeks.  I can only imagine how the English feel. It is even worse that they essentially bl...

Quote:  "Coffee drinkers are better thinkers." Today's quote of the day is inspired in part by a tweeted article from the Cato Institute that I retweeted because it related to the tweet of the day a few days back on alcohol and civilization.  The article also mentioned caffeine and civilization, which reminded me of these old coffee mugs our family uses camping.  The article is short and well worth a read. Tweet Below: Cc: quote of the day 7/8/18 https://t.co/TruPsDI5cH — Stock Kitchen (@stockitchen) July 11, 2018 The Stockitchen partners are well known coffee fans and you know we all love a good, thoughtful discourse so I would say this line embodies Stockitchen about as well as any out there.  Writing that now feels a little pretentious like we are all some brain geniuses (we most certainly are not) because we down a couple cups of black a day.  What I mean is that the spirit of coffee drinking talked about in the Cato Institute article, coff...

Today's quote of the day is from the movie Up in the Air  with George Clooney. The line is: "Moving is living.  The slower we move the faster we die." George Clooney plays an employee of a company paid to fire people at other companies, and he spends almost all of his time flying from city to city.  On the side, he is a motivational speaker where the above quote is essentially the thesis of his preachings, in which he also emphasizes a simple life without too many things weighing you down. I love this line because it makes me think.  Many people, especially young people would agree it would be an enjoyable lifestyle to travel the world and constantly be doing new things.  At what cost?  There are certainly cases of people who live fast-paced lifestyles but feel unfulfilled.  Who is to say that living a slow, methodical life in which you put down deep roots in something is bad?   The film raises the same question, where Clooney ques...

This afternoon, President Donald Trump announced his pick for the empty SCOTUS seat as Brett Kavanaugh. Just a quick wikipedia search tells me Kavanaugh worked with Ken Starr on impeaching Bill Clinton. Pretty hypocritical that a guy who graduated from Yale University, cum laude, put so much time and effort into prosecuting another guy for his cum laudes if you ask me. Begs the question though, did Trump make the pick purely on the basis of Kavanaugh’s hatred for extramarital sex? I’ve seen a lot of people claiming that the appointment of Kavanaugh will lead to the reversal of Roe v Wade and, politics aside, I think they’re right on. Name one person in history who hates unethical sex more than Ken Starr and Brett Kavanaugh, Christian Church excluded. Clearly Brett Kavanaugh will try and put those fornicators in their place. Stare decisis, more like stare deceased because we are about to see some major table turning in the Supreme Court. -Microwave

Today Starbucks announced that they will not be serving straws in their beverages anymore, instead opting for an eco-friendly lid, with a sippy cup style mouthpiece. This change comes as in response to the growing movement to keep plastic trash out of the ocean, and specifically to save sea turtles. Starbucks is full of sh*t. Don’t interpret my take the wrong way, however. I have no qualms with removing the straws from beverages. I’m also sure that it does help in the movement to keep plastic waste out of the oceans. I don’t think that Starbucks really cares that much at all about this movement though. Starbucks sells nearly 3 billion drinks a year. Figure about half of those are iced beverages served with a straw and you have 4.1 million straws served per day. Sourcing straws at $1.59/box of 500 (rate according to www.webstaurantstore.com), Starbucks has just saved themselves $12,700 per day simply at the cost of changing the di used to cut the lids out at the factory...

Today's quote of the day is from the movie  Casablanca: The lines read: Major Strasser: What is your nationality? Rick: I'm a drunkard. Capt. Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world. I love this quote mainly because it is a funny line from a great movie.  I do also see a lot of truth in this quote.  Alcohol is a huge part of Western culture for sure, and probably Eastern culture as well.  I find it amazing that two very different cultures that have developed from unique beginnings both built booze into the equation.  I once read a short essay titled "Civilized Beer", part of a book by Thomas Standage.  It detailed how beer and bread became a hallmark of civilization in early Mesopotamia.  Essentially, it focused on how the ability to make bread and beer meant a society had agricultural capabilities, and thus many people could focus on other tasks besides hunting and gathering.  Standage even told the myth of an uncivilized sava...

We are getting a little academic with today's quote: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on the fortune." Literature fans will recognize this line from Shakespeare's history Julius Caesar.   This play is probably my favorite play from Shakespeare because of both the historical content and the powerful themes carried by Shakespeare's language. Some context of the line is that Brutus says this to Cassius when discussing whether to take action in the fight for control of Rome or sit back and wait. I love this specific line because it is a great life outlook quote.  I am very much a goal-oriented person, but this quote takes that further.  It says every person has opportunities in life, one just has to put themselves in the right position to be ready, then seize the opportunities when they come.  Doing this will lead to success in one's endeavors.  It also passively acknowledges that sometimes the tide is against a pe...