Making Cents Sense

There is a certain kind of investor you almost never hear from. They don’t post screenshots. They don’t quote-tweet earnings calls. They don’t announce “conviction buys” in all caps. In fact, if you ask them what they own, they’ll usually deflect with something vague like, “A mix of things,” or “Mostly boring stuff,” or the most revealing tell of all: “It works for me.” These are not underinformed investors. They are often the opposite. They read filings. They understand incentives. They know what compound interest actually does over decades instead of quarters. They also tend to be very wealthy. Not loudly wealthy. Quietly wealthy. The kind of wealthy that doesn’t need to explain itself. And when you eventually glimpse their portfolios—usually by accident, through a footnote, a family office disclosure, or a long-form profile buried deep in a financial magazine—you notice something odd. They don’t look impressive. No moonshots. No viral tickers. No narratives that requir...

There are two kinds of people who claim they understand the economy. The first wears a suit, speaks in acronyms, and releases a 47-page PDF explaining why earnings missed expectations by 12 basis points despite “resilient consumer demand.” The second is standing in line at Home Depot at 8:12 a.m. on a Saturday, holding a receipt longer than most quarterly outlooks, quietly learning everything they need to know about where the economy is actually headed. Guess which one has the better signal. This is not a metaphor. This is not a lifestyle take. This is not a cute observation about suburban life. This is a serious argument: Home Depot receipts are one of the most underrated leading indicators in American capitalism. And if you want to understand inflation, labor stress, housing cycles, discretionary spending, and middle-class confidence before Wall Street agrees it exists, you’d be better off studying suburban hardware aisles than reading another brokerage note titled “Why We Rema...

How to Predict Retail Winners by Counting Boxes in Back Rooms Retail does not fail dramatically. It fails quietly, from the back. Long before the headlines. Long before the bankruptcy filing. Long before executives start saying phrases like strategic alternatives and challenging macro environment. Retail fails first in the back room —in the stacks of unopened boxes, the pallets no one wants to break down, the seasonal product that never quite makes it to the floor because everyone already knows how the story ends. You can predict which retailers will survive and which ones won’t without reading a single earnings report. All you have to do is count boxes. The Back Room Is the Truth Serum The sales floor is theater. It is lighting, music, signage, mannequins posed with ambition, and associates trained to say let me know if you need anything while silently praying you don’t. The back room is reality. That’s where: Strategy collides with demand Forecasts meet human be...

There are two kinds of people during earnings season. The first group says things like, “I’m a long-term investor. Short-term volatility doesn’t bother me.” The second group refreshes their brokerage app at 3:07 a.m. while convincing themselves this is research . If you’re reading this, congratulations—you’re in the second group. Earnings season isn’t just a financial event. It’s a full-body psychological experience. It hijacks your sleep cycle, distorts your sense of time, rewires your emotional regulation, and convinces otherwise rational adults that a single quarterly conference call is a referendum on their intelligence, worth, and future retirement happiness. This is not a guide to picking stocks. This is a guide to surviving your own brain . Chapter 1: Why Earnings Season Feels Personal (Even Though It Isn’t) Earnings reports have an uncanny ability to feel targeted . As if the CFO woke up one morning and said, “Let’s disappoint this specific investor today.” This happ...

There was a time—gather around, children, and let me tell you a story—when investing wasn’t a cinematic event. No opening bell montages. No Discord servers screaming BUY THE DIP. No finance influencers yelling into ring lights about “asymmetric upside.” There were no dopamine spikes. There were no fireworks. There was just… fourteen cents. Fourteen cents showing up in your account like a polite, unassuming ghost. Fourteen cents that didn’t trend. Fourteen cents that didn’t even buy gum anymore. Fourteen cents that quietly bought more ownership of a company you already owned. This is the lost art of drip investing—the slow, unglamorous, penny-level compounding strategy that feels boring right up until it absolutely isn’t. The Day Investing Stopped Being Small Modern investing has an image problem. Somewhere along the way, we decided that if an investment wasn’t dramatic, it wasn’t worth doing. A $50 gain feels like a rounding error. A $2 dividend feels like an insult. Anythi...