HoweEnterprise.com
January 18, 2021
Auto trends in 2021 Hi Taylor: Any interesting trends in the auto industry for the coming year? Feels like after the slump Taylor that was 2020, we should be in line for some interesting things. - Arnold Hey Arnold: You and I have a mutual interest. I’m always car shopping with my eyes, and also mindful of what direction investment strategies might be going. Don’t cash in on my thoughts too quickly, but here are some things that have caught my eye. Electric trucks. It looks like a handful of companies have figured out how to merge ecofriendly and payload capacity. Ford, Rivian, Lordstown Motors and other manufacturers have announced models that seem to satisfy truck enthusiasts. I’m sure there are still plenty of kinks to work out, but my gut tells me it won’t be long before we see the roads filling up with big, powerful hybrid vehicles. I’m especially interested to see which companies bring these new models into their fleets, as that will be a good way to gauge how soon the general public will get on board. Online shopping. Naturally, the pandemic slowed down visits to used car lots. As things get back to normal that trend will level out, but this also seems like a service that will only get more popular now that it’s thoroughly entered the mainstream. There will still be all the sales tactics and lot perusing for traditionalists, but the number of online sales will continue to rise as dealerships and third-party sellers make that option more available. Depending on how steadily online sales rise, I wouldn’t be surprised if more
dealerships start offering home delivery on vehicles above a certain price point. At that point, we can expect other tech and gig services to start getting involved as well. More of the same. I’m excited about the above trends and other new releases, but I’m not blind to the fact that the auto industry looks relatively similar to how it has in years past. Sedans are getting sleeker, electric cars and hybrids are more accessible, SUVs keep adding bells and whistles and cargo space. The global shift toward cleaner energy will continue pushing the needle for car manufacturers, but we haven’t reached any sort of tipping point yet. We’ll check in again next year to see if 2021 was the year everything flipped.
The car industry won’t ever leave us—it’ll just keep adapting as consumers’ needs evolve. It’s exciting and challenging for us investors to keep up, but definitely worth the effort. Happy New Year! Legal Disclaimer: Information presented is for educational purposes only and is not an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. To submit a question to be answered in this column, please send it via email to Question@GoFarWithKovar.com or via USPS to Taylor Kovar, 415 S 1st St, Suite 300, Lufkin, TX 75901.
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Living with children Making children happy became a parenting goal in the early 1970s. The paradox, as everyone with a modicum of commonsense John knows, is that Rosemond the more effort parents put into making a child happy, the more unhappy the child becomes.
Let’s say she begins with putting him to bed in his crib, kissing him goodnight, and walking out of the room. He will scream like he has never screamed before. He will go completely insane and that is not hyperbole. That will be the worst night of her life, the good news being that if she stays the course, he will get over his trauma, begin to act like he’s never been traumatized, and go to sleep when put in his crib.
Underneath the cute appearance of an infant lurks a tyrant. I would have been expelled from graduate school for writing that sentence, but as loathe as many of today’s parents are to accept it, that is the truth. Another paradox: Parents who are unwilling to accept it are the ones most likely to give the tyrant permission to step out of hiding and begin his reign of terror.
Once he has accepted that he’s going to sleep in his own bed – I give it two to four weeks – it’s on to letting him know that he doesn’t control mommy during the day either. He will go insane again. In short, things will get worse by much before they begin to get better.
The adult granddaughter of two close friends has invited the tyrant into her home. Her first child is the quintessential terrible toddler, and she is the quintessential enabler. He screams and she jumps into action, figures out what he wants and – needless to say? – gives it to him. As one might have guessed, she holds him almost constantly. He sleeps with her and her husband…as one might have guessed. Their very own tyrant-in-residence becomes more tyrannical with every passing day…as one might have guessed. What is she thinking? He will outgrow his tyranny? More likely he will grow into it. If she just gives him this one more thing, he will begin to calm down? Quite the contrary. He is becoming addicted to controlling her. Power corrupts even a two-year-old. He is not going to suddenly get his fill of mommy and begin acting like a reasonable human being. As time goes on, he is going to devise ever more ways of asserting that he is the big dog in the relationship. The mother-child relationship is already codependent and the only person who can change the terms of that contract is mommy. The problem, of course, is that hell hath no fury like a tyrant denied.
I have witnessed what happens when the tyrant is allowed to dictate his parents’ lives for more than a few years. First, everyone is miserable. Second, the tyrant goes to school and is quickly identified, tested, diagnosed with some bogus “disorder,” and put on a medication the side effects of which become a problem in and of themselves. That’s when the “medication shuffle” begins. The authors of the two bestselling parenting books of the 1970s urged parents to do everything in their power to ensure their kids possessed high regard for themselves - high selfesteem, that is. Since unhappy kids must not have high selfesteem, the goal of raising children became that of making, and keeping, them happy. And now, some fifty years later, unhappy tyrants are everywhere. It is one of the saddest things in all the world, especially the world of all too many of today’s grandparents. Family psychologist John Rosemond: johnrosemond.com, p arentguru.com. John Rosemond has worked with families, children, and parents since 1971 in the field of family psychology. In 1971, John earned his masters in psychology from Western Illinois University and was elected to the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society.
