Tag: Chicken Little

1980s/Business school case study/Family/Family Business

RUNNING OF THE BULLS

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As an MBA business school student in the fall of 1987, in the middle of a raging bull stock market, I was in receipt of a very strong sell signal. In all honesty, I had been for a long time.

Was it from Herby Fischer, my own (and Dad’s) stock broker? (I had a very small account with one holding, Wix, which promptly went down after Herby bought it for me).  No.

Was it from Ira Kawaller, Jimmy Rogers, Jim Freeman, John Whitney or any of the other great business school professors at Columbia Business School? Nope.

How about my pal, Arch Crawford, the famous stock prognosticator who predicted future DJIA index levels by Astrology? Nice try. But wrong.

Ok. Ya think the source could have been someone who had no experience whatsoever in portfolio theory, Elliot wave, or value investing? Someone who never quoted Peter Lynch, Warren Buffet, or even read Alan Abelson’s column in Barron’s?

Yes, it was. None other than the namesake of this blog. My own Dad, Bernard Olcott. Only problem was, he was predicting that the stock market was going to crash. Every. Single. Day. So each evening, I would review the financial news and remark to myself, boy oh boy, that stock market just keeps climbing like gangbusters!

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1980s/Business school case study/Family Business/Investment Schemes

CHICKEN LITTLE

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Above illustration courtesy of Mabel Hill – http://www.romanceroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/barnesreader07.JPG, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10806723

Chicken Little was annoying for at least two reasons.

For those of you reading this blog from overseas, perhaps you may know this little fluff ball and the associated folk tale as Henny Penny or Chicken Lichen.

By way of review, the story goes like this.  Chicken Little (or Henny Penny) was a chick outside somewhere, probably in New Jersey, when all of a sudden she was hit on the head by a falling acorn.  Her gut reaction was to conclude that the sky was falling and that the king would benefit from a warning of this “fact.”  So, she embarks on an epic journey and persuades all that she encounters that, indeed, the “sky is falling.”  In this way, she is joined by other feathered friends like Ducky Lucky, Cocky Locky, Gander Lander, and so on.

Eventually, the flock encounters a clever fox who listens attentively, and then invites them all to his lair for some refreshments.  This turns out badly as the fox simply latches the door and devours them all.

In some versions, Cocky Locky manages to warn Chicken Little who escapes and lives happily ever after, most likely ending up in an EconoLodge outside Newark.

But I digress.

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