Jim Thoughts

I recently retired. It’s been quite a journey: delivering newspapers, landscaping, short-order cooking, blast-cleaning factory floors, the list goes on. In my twenties I even carted around a Greek food truck traveling to various festivals and fairs in Michigan and Indiana (beginning the season in May with the Indy 500) with my younger brother Paul.

In 1986, I finally settled into a “grown up” job and became a “stockbroker”, primarily selling tax-free municipal bonds. In 1998, I opened my own firm, Roumell Asset Management, LLC (RAM), focused on deep-value small cap investing based on the investment principals of famed value investor Marty Whitman. In 2011, we started a mutual fund that at its peak reached over $300 million in assets.

My work life was a mix of high highs, and low lows. RAM’s success was greater than I ever imagined. Unfortunately, in the final years of our firm’s twenty-five plus-year run, a few (three to be exact) major investments went south on us. It was, and still is, very humbling. How to “make peace” with it all?

As a small-business entrepreneur, I was “supposed” to be anti-government, but I evidently didn’t get the memo. I’ve always been grateful for the many public investments that contributed to whatever success I enjoyed throughout my life.

Having said that, as a long-time investor, I’m also well-aware that governmental regulations can be excessive and inhibit business formation. For example, in the 1990s our firm invested in a large piece of raw land in Southern California expecting it to be entitled for development in a reasonable amount of time. We had hoped a housing development would ultimately be built to help solve a housing shortage in that state. Today, publicly-traded Tejon Ranch (TRC) still remains a largely undeveloped piece of land – 25 years later - because of laws allowing certain environmental groups the ability to tie the property up in litigation for decades.

Still, I’ve been writing about the net positive role that government plays in our lives for many years. My first article (published in 2012), “What I Built with Government Help” was a reflection on the important ways I was personally helped by Uncle Sam. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-i-built--with-government-help/2012/08/17/ecc86b24-e885-11e1-936a-b801f1abab19_story.html

Recent events from the current Administration motivated me to pick up my pen again.

My real motivation? I would like to get more connected, to be in touch (with old friends and new ones), find new purpose. I expect to comment on public issues, and to explore private challenges as a newly retired person feeling adrift. Looking back, I can see how defining work was for me, how much it kept me busy and gave me an identity that allowed me to be in the world confidently. What now? Let’s see where this goes.

Thanks for reading my first post titled, “Is the Government Really too Big?”