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<\/a><\/p>\nTo Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends,\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00b7 Last week we mentioned the cost of a year at Stanford in 1955 as being $705, so if we take that and run it out to today\u2019s cost of about $55,000, it means that the cost of attending Stanford has been climbing about 8% a year over the past 50 years. Stanford, by the way, is referred to as Stanfurd by people at Cal . For some reason, Cal students think this is hilarious.<\/p>\n
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- A large percentage of what we do is to help companies not doing too well,\u00a0 but we also get to see many companies doing extraordinarily well.\u00a0 If we look at Mountain West, Academy Mortgage, and New American Mortgage, all three are extremely profitable. Mountain West is traditional wholesale, Academy is traditional retail, and New American is a Call Center operation, but all three share a few things in common: (1) Owners who look at the big picture but pay attention to the slightest detail that might hurt profits, (2) tight control over costs, and (3)\u00a0 very tightly run secondary marketing operations.\u00a0 The last one means that they price in decent margins, and they realize those margins<\/em>.\u00a0 There is almost no leakage.\u00a0 If they build in 125 bps profit on a loan, they get<\/em> 125 bps.<\/li>\n
- We got lots of nominations for movies about friendships. Brian\u2019s Song<\/em> was the runaway winner, with the following getting at least two votes. Midnight Cowboy<\/em> and Shawshank<\/em> each got eight votes.\u00a0 Here they are, not listed in any particular order.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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