September 30, 2020. End of third-quarter. First presidential debate. Baseball playoffs beginning. NBA finals start. For Jews, it’s the beginning of a new year. Today feels pivotal. Sometimes you can sense things are changing. The weather has abruptly shifted in Chicago. It went from summer to decidedly fall overnight. The real apple cider has come in. The sweet corn is all but gone. I plan to buy my two bushels of 10 varieties of apples this Sunday at the farmers market from Hardin Orchards near Kalamazoo. It is my yearly ritual. My wife, Risa, peels them, I slice them. We…
Author: Lloyd Graff
Sleep and lack of it has long been one of life’s biggest mysteries to me. Some days it feels so easy and comfortable, an effortless, pleasant activity, and the next night it is an elusive phantom that I mentally grab for and continually miss. I used to find it much easier. Wash up. Light stretch. Hug my wife. Casually discuss the next day’s plans. Turn over, and sleep would easily take me. Not so anymore. For years, after being told I had sleep apnea disorder, I struggled with an annoying breathing apparatus that was supposed to provide me with a…
I talk to a lot of folks in the machining trade every day, and the clear sense I am getting is that business is improving. The automotive segment is definitely firming. Auto related work has bounced back from the April, May, June, July doldrums. Demand has picked up, and car showrooms are extremely short of hot inventory. European and Japanese companies were also shut down, and the supply chains are strained. Guns and the medical sector are strengthening. We are seeing an uptick in the used machinery business. The auctioneers are surprised at how strong their sale prices are holding…
There is a common thread when it comes to success in baseball, business, and poker. You must have the guts and the strength to walk away from bad bets. You must admit mistakes, accept that they are part of life, and courageously walk away. The Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox are both in first place on September 1, 2020. This may be the first time that has happened in a hundred years. The Cubs had the courage to rebuild a mediocre team when new ownership brought in new management with Theo Epstein in 2011, who had successfully rebuilt…
Like desert marigolds flowering out of nowhere, 4 million square feet of new buildings are going up simultaneously this week in the primarily African American South Suburbs of Chicago where I live and work. Twenty miles north of here in Englewood, where my dad grew up and attended High School, people are shooting at each other every night and connecting with disturbing accuracy. The daily carnage is staggering and overflowing into the expensive Magnificent Mile of North Michigan Avenue, leaving it looking like Beirut’s downtown. Amazon loves the South Suburbs. They already have built half a dozen fulfillment centers in…
I had a very informative talk yesterday with a member of the machine tool brotherhood who is diversifying his portfolio into real estate, specifically Airbnb rentals in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area. I thought Airbnb was in trouble because nobody was traveling out of fear of the pandemic, but he had a different view. He moved to Charlotte two and a half years ago from Chicago, where he had grown up and worked for two decades. His plan was to buy units he and his wife could manage themselves, saving any management fees. He wanted spots that would demand a…
Chicago is appalled by the disgusting and brazen looting of stores like Gucci and Nordstrom’s on its Magnificent Mile. Our Mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is furious and humiliated that her city’s elite shopping area has now been ransacked several times by bands of young thugs that communicate by cell phone, coordinating when to strike and who to hit first. They come by car and train and overwhelm the police so they can grab clothes, electronics, and booze. There is good camera surveillance, so the authorities can pick up many of the looters later if they are inclined, but the State’s Attorney,…
The automotive world is churning these days. New cars are creeping out of the showrooms, but used cars are going bananas. CarMax stock has doubled since April. Yesterday’s announcement by Ford that CEO Jim Hackett is stepping down should come as little surprise after his 3-year tenure saw Ford’s stock plummet 39%. His predecessor, Mark Fields, lasted only 2 years. Ford’s big plus has always been its F-150 pickup, and it is reintroducing the Bronco, with 150,000 pre-sales to position itself against the Jeep Wrangler. Hackett was an outsider who was recruited from furniture maker Steelcase. His successor, Jim Farley,…
We just recorded the biggest gain in stock prices for any quarter since 1998 with American unemployment at unprecedented levels. You don’t need to read the obvious in this blog, so let’s talk Yeezy, Kanye West, and Gap. Gap stock rose 42% in one day last week when Kanye West announced he was designing a clothing line with his Yeezy brand on it, exclusively for Gap for 10 years. Gap’s value jumped $2 billion dollars with the news. Being no fan of hip hop music, but mildly interested in West because he grew up near where I did on Chicago’s South…
My wife Risa and I will celebrate 50 years of marriage this Sunday. It sounds like an awfully big number. I don’t feel old enough for that number, and Risa looks like 45 or 50 on a bad day. Less than half of the adults in the country are married today, but for Risa and I it was a natural fit. I started talking about marriage a few weeks after we met in January of 1969. She was 17 years old and a freshman at the University of Michigan. I was a graduate student, recently back from military training. Risa…