lifeonearth

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease well a bundt pan.

  1 2/3 c. flour
  1/4 tsp. baking powder
  3/4 tsp. salt
  1/4 tsp. ground cloves
  1 1/3 c. sugar
  1 tsp. baking soda
  1/2 tsp. cinnamon

  1/3 c. shortening, softened
  1/3 c. nuts, chopped
  1 c. canned pumpkin
  1/3 c. water
  2/3 c. raisins
  1 egg

Beat 2 minutes at medium speed or 300 strokes, scraping bowl
often. Add 1 unbeaten egg. Beat for 2 more minutes. Pour
into greased bundt pan. Bake 40 to 45 minutes at 350
degrees. Serve with Spice Sauce (below).SPICE SAUCE:

  1 c. sugar
  1/4 tsp. cloves
  1/4 tsp. cinnamon
  1/2 c. butter
  1/4 c. flour
  1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  Dash salt
  1 c. water

Mix all ingredients, except butter, in a saucepan. Add 1 cup
water gradually and stir well. Cook over medium heat until
thick, then add 1/2 cup butter. Thin with water if too
thick. Serve HOT on Pumpkin Dessert Ring.

Another famous investor I enjoy reading about is Ben Graham. Although I don’t subscribe to Graham’s strict value investing principles, I pay close attention to fundamentals and “relative value” in my search for stocks and real estate properties.

I particularly like Graham’s “Mr. Market” analogy, describing how stock prices move based on investors’ emotions.

I also savor the great irony in Graham’s uncharacteristic early-stage investment in a little insurance company (his partners wanted to make the investment and Graham reluctantly went along) that eventually became Geico, “incidentally” making Graham more money than all of his many years of “cigarette butt,” bargain basement value stock investing combined!

One famous investor that I like is George Soros. I like his style and flair. Soros is the epitome of a trader, having the uncanny ability to reverse his thinking on a dime, going from long to short in an instant, largely based on his “intuition” of where the market is headed. My long-term, deliberate investing style is the polar opposite of Soros’ short-term positioning and frequent reversals.

However, I find similarities with his private, “small shop” orientation as an investor, an approach that he so successfully employed in growing his Quantum Fund in the 1970s and 1980s. I find that Soros’ ideas on “reflexivity,” describing how participants themselves influence the direction of the market, really add only very minimally to my understanding how markets work and how to invest.