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Blogging Wealthtrack

For those of you who follow this blog you will know that I have long been a fan of the show Consuelo Mack: Wealthtrack. This morning, with my dog on my lap, I decided to clear out some recent episodes off of my DVR. I thought that the show was interesting and it was also somewhat surprising how much more I noticed about each of the guests as I was working on getting the ideas of the guests and the shows all at once when I was just trying to get through the episodes.

I generally think that Saturday is a good time for me to watch these shows and I think that this is one of the most interesting things I can watch that will not be too much for me to work on in terms of actual work -- something that I really strive to avoid on my weekends where possible since there is enough of that during the week -- and also something that makes me very interested and engaged but at the same time is relaxing. It sounds strange but listening to the show and also reading and writing about money more generally really gives me a lot of comfort and relaxation. I realize that this is not the impact for everyone.

For me this mornings shows were all fairly pedestrian with the exception of a little bit that I picked up on a show with Tom Russo and Wallace Weitz. The thrust of this show is the fact that there were some real impacts that were made by the Chinese crisis and Nestle S.A. took this opportunity to really deploy some capital, buying three separate businesses. Both guests run funds similar in porformance, about 12 percent I think since inception. That is remarkable in itself, but what is more interesting, at least to me is that the tactics to do it vary, even though the both consider themselves value investors and very much likc warren buffet, they recognize that Warren Buffett enjoys fantastic returns largely through the use of leverage. Perhaps I am just projecting, but I even think I sensed a hint of dispise at this fact

So, in reviewing this episode, one thing became very clear: the biggest impact you can have is whether or not you stay invested during the bad times if you were in the market when it went down. If you weren't, then fine, buy in, says Weitz, but otherwise you're following Russo and just trying to stay fully invested but be positioned. Hey, either way is fine with me, as long as I could walk away with that 12 percent return!

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