I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving last week with family and friends. In the words of Charlie Brown, “We should just be thankful for being together. I think that’s what they mean by Thanksgiving.”

According to the Social Security Administration, a 3.2% cost-of-living (COLA) adjustment will take place in January. Thanks to a resurgence in inflation in the last several years, the COLA has increased by a cumulative 18.8% since 2021. This is the largest increase in three years over the last four decades. The largest COLA increase took place last year with a rise of 8.7%.

I have included the Raymond James November 17, 2023, “Weekly Headings: Thoughts of the Week”, by Raymond James’ Larry Adam, Chief Investment Officer, Private Client Group. Please contact me at your convenience if you would like to discuss.

I recently read “The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived: Tom Watson Jr. and the Epic Story of How IBM Created the Digital Age”, written by Ralph Watson McElvenny and Marc Wortman, and published October 24, 2023. McElvenny is Tom Watson Jr.’s oldest grandson, but the book is fairly even handed and very revealing of the shortcomings of Tom Jr, his father IBM patriarch Tom Watson, and his brother Dick Watson. Tom Jr. was the rebellious eldest son of the founder of IBM, who struggled academically with dyslexia and was flunked out of a series of private academies. After barely graduating from Brown University, Tom Jr. eventually joined IBM as a sales trainee. While he had success in sales, as the son of CEO he knew his success was not his own and he spent few hours in the office and much time flying his private plane. He gained his self-confidence when he joined the Army Air Corps while in his late 20s and flew B-24s under the command of Maj. Gen. Follett Bradley as the United States entered World War II. He credited his management and leadership lessons under General Bradley for much of his later success after he returned to IBM after the war. In 1952, at the age of 38, he became the President of IBM, with his domineering father still running the company. Family dynamics in the business continue as a theme when later he pushes his younger brother Dick out of his leadership role at IBM. The history of the company as it evolved from an empire built on mechanically sorted punch cards to the launch of the System/360 computer in the 1960s is fascinating. The company had run afoul of anti-trust regulators for decades, and this is pointed to as part of the justification of outsourcing the operating rights to MS-DOS to a tiny company named Microsoft. If you like biographies and business books, this book is well worth the read.

Thanks for reading and please contact me with any questions or comments.

Regards,

Frank R. Hampton
Financial Advisor