The Daily Feather — Low-Hanging Fruit

“A garden where roses and cabbages jostle each other, where vegetables have to make room for gnarled old apple trees, and where, amid the raspberry bushes and row of currant trees, you expect to come upon Hetty herself, stooping to gather the low-hanging fruit.”

George Eliot, Adam Bede

‘Low-hanging fruit’ debuted in the most literal sense, as you see in the quote above from an 1859 novel. Fifty years on, it splashed out in its figurative form to mean a job or goal that’s easily accomplished. Picking fruit from low branches is innately easier than reaching for higher branches. In the business world, it refers to clients who are effortlessly ‘sold’ because they already want to buy your wares or services. We dare say, the payoff for conquering gnarly challenges that require effort tends to be appreciably higher.

Today’s missive opens with a reference to the low-hanging fruit that’s captivated investors’ interest since the pandemic struck – Manheim’s Used Vehicle Value Index. Tremors erupted when this hotter-than-expected data hit Tuesday igniting fears the Federal Reserve’s Jerome Powell would have yet another justification for holding policy ‘higher for longer.’