A human resources guru once told me that almost everyone’s professional success can be attributed to one inflection point — a particular event — that often lasts no more than a few minutes. That definitely happened to me at the genesis of what would eventually become Breakfast with Dave. I remember exactly what transpired as if it were yesterday. In October of 1998, I was working at BMO Nesbitt Burns when I attended the annual client gala at the Royal

I participated in a webinar last week for a charitable organization and was asked to kick things off with something personal. So, rather than diving right into the markets and the economy, I started the eveningwith a story, which I’ll share with you now. A friend’s son had just started working in the capital markets side at Bank of Nova Scotia. He called recently to ask me about the “secret to success”. My initial reply was a bit glib: I

If you have never seen the movie The King’s Speech, I highly recommend it alongside the reruns of It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. The classic won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, exactly a decade ago. In a nutshell, it’s about how King George VI managed to cope with a stammer, to only then, through intense therapy and learning, deliver the sermon of his life when Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. So, what does this

Last Thursday, I was being interviewed on CNBC when I was told that my views were diametrically opposed to the consensus and how the markets are positioned. To which I exclaimed that it’s been many years since I was this excited about going against the herd. I did have just enough airtime to work in Bob Farrell’s Rule #9: “When all the experts and forecasts agree, something else is going to happen.” Of = course, this was all about the

Recently, I was having a cocktail on the backyard deck with my youngest of three boys, Michael. I had just picked him up from Queen’s University in Kingston where he finished his B.A. with a major in psychology. Michael (I still call him “Little Mikey” even though he is 21 and stands six feet tall, give or take), as mostly everyone knows, came up with the moniker Breakfast with Dave more than twelve years ago. He also has a bartending

I figured that since we’re still in summertime, I would share with everyone the summer job that changed everything for me. This is what students today who are opting to sit back and relax and collect a government benefit are missing out on — the opportunity to go out there and make a difference. In my case, it was all about weed and grass. But not the kind you’re thinking of. It was the summer of 1982, between third and

When I’m asked how I got through these past twenty months of the pandemic with my sanity intact, the answer hasn’t changed. Wine. Good wine. And lots of it. But not to the point where it clouds my judgment (though many folks think I may have had too much given my against-the-consensus call on the inflationary future). I wasn’t always a wine guy. I used to be a beer (and scotch) guy. But I began to develop a taste for

This was a rough year for everything outside the equity market and I say good riddance to 2021 just as I did to 2020 a year ago this time. But it must be said that at least we have vaccines, boosters and treatment, and there is hope now that the pandemic will finally transition to an endemic. I keep saying that in the 1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald classic The Great Gatsby, there was not one reference to the 1918-19 Spanish Flu in