Category Archives: Current

October 1, 2025

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Welcome to the October issue of the Mutual Fund Observer. We’re glad you’re here.

And welcome to the Dog Days of Autumn! The natural world is scrambling to keep up with the changes we’ve triggered, and continue to intensify, upon it. As I walked one of the many bike/hike trails in the Quad Cities on Sunday, I confronted two worlds. One was defined by 90-degree temperatures, hot sunshine, and cracked earth. The other by the rhythm of birds called southward and plants quietening for the season to Continue reading →

September 1, 2025

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Welcome to the September oh-so-totally back-to-school issue of the Mutual Fund Observer! We’re glad you’re here.

I’ve got the privilege of teaching an Honors section of Introduction to the Liberal Arts for the first time in a quarter century. It’s a delight and a terror. Many of my students, like many of you, start with a mistaken idea of what “the liberal arts” are. They are not “the fusty old white guy stuff that they made me sit through until I could get into my major classes.” (sigh) At their simplest, the liberal arts are Continue reading →

August 1, 2025

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Welcome to the August issue of the Mutual Fund Observer! We just completed one of the five rainiest Julys in the city’s history, with three torrential downpours (the garden celebrates) and roll expectantly into August.

For those of us who teach for a living, August is the season of watchful waiting, a phrase lifted from the Christian celebration of Advent. The faithful are waiting for … you know, Continue reading →

July 1, 2025

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Welcome to the “Midsommar in Scandinavia” issue of the Mutual Fund Observer. Chip and I are enjoying a long-planned holiday in Sweden and Norway. We’re equally delighted that you’re here … and we’re there!

In this month’s Observer…

Among other things (how would I know for sure? I’m in Gamla Stan), Lynn Bolin addresses the emerging threat of tariff-induced inflation with “Protecting Against Tariff Induced Inflation,” analyzing how widespread tariffs will likely be passed through to consumers and drive inflation to an estimated 3.4% peak next quarter. Drawing on five years of post-pandemic bond performance data, he demonstrates Continue reading →

June 1, 2025

By David Snowball

Welcome to the June issue of the Mutual Fund Observer!

It’s a grand month, whose start was marked by the 165th commencement ceremony celebrating Augustana’s graduates. The college was born in 1860, an expression of longing and ambition. Swedish immigrants in the Midwest – and there were a lot of them – wanted to provide their children with a better life, which, to them, meant a good education. At the same time, they didn’t want their children to forget their homeland and its proud traditions.

So, they made a college. Modeled after the great universities in northern Europe, Augustana became an expression of faith: in the welcome that America gave its new citizens, in the country’s endless promise, in the power of education, Continue reading →

May 1, 2025

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Welcome to May, traditionally, the month in which to sell in!

These first few weeks of May are an odd time on campus. My seniors are scrambling for jobs (or antidepressants), the juniors are teeing up internships, and the youngsters are … well, mostly wondering what just happened to Continue reading →

April 1, 2025

By David Snowball

Welcome to the April Mutual Fund Observer!

My mom used to say, “March sometimes comes in like a lion.” She never added, “and then it eats you.”

March, named for the God of War, strikes me for two reasons. First, it is the month that has encompassed a whole series of catastrophes in the financial markets and Continue reading →

March 1, 2025

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Welcome to the March issue of Mutual Fund Observer.

I am surprised, sometimes, at how much I now appreciate some of the stuff that I found most mindless and annoying in high school. (I’m still not there with Moby Dick; the whole idea of a monomaniacally obsessed old guy leading his Continue reading →

February 1, 2025

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Planting trees is a venture into the future, it is a hand held out to other generations.

Mirabel Osler

Embracing Chaos: Reflections on Growth Amidst Uncertainty

As I sit down to write this month’s letter, I’ve been wandering around my garden thinking what an unsalvageable mess it is: an unlovely and unidentifiable tangle of dead stems, fall leaves, stubble, trash mysteriously blown in, and the occasional corpse. (Typically avian.) It’s hard not to despair of it. And, hard not to imagine parallels to Continue reading →

January 1, 2025

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Welcome to the January issue of Mutual Fund Observer.

January was named after Janus, the tutelary deity of the year’s first month. As tutelary, he was guardian, patron, and protector. Absent from the Greek pantheon, Janus was the Roman god of beginnings, transitions, and endings. It was the “transitions” part that led Romans to place the two-faced god near entries and passageways, where he oversaw their comings and Continue reading →