I should start today with a “Thank You” to those considerate readers who asked about my family’s hurricane exposure — I live in Massachusetts, but have mentioned from time to time that we also have a little condo in Sarasota, Florida, and we know plenty of folks down there. So far, it seems like our Florida neighborhood got relatively lucky, with power outages and trees down but nowhere near the massive flooding or full-scale destruction that we’re seeing on the news. We’re particularly fortunate compared to the folks just 30-40 miles south of Sarasota, since the most violent landfall and highest storm surge turned out to be in places like Port Charlotte, Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island.

I’m sure we have some readers down in Southwest Florida, where this is now the second hurricane to cause significant damage in recent years, after decades of pretty good luck, and I hope everybody made it through with life and limb intact. I guess those who had just some downed trees, loss of power, and a billboard falling in their backyard are the lucky ones this time. If you or your loved ones are anywhere near that mess, my heart goes out to you. If not, you can join me in counting yourself lucky, and perhaps you can help out those folks if you’re in a position to do so (I’m planning to make some donations, but haven’t figured out with charitable groups are the best “bet” at the moment — so far the state-run Florida Disaster Fund and the American Red Cross seem to be the clearest and most transparent helpers… if you have other suggestions, please share in the comment section at the bottom).

What’s going to happen next, at least on the investment side? Well, whenever there’s a big disaster, the investing world tends to start paying attention to insurance companies again. Not many of those companies are actually underwriting homeowners insurance in Florida these days, not with the massively screwed up insurance regulation in that state and the huge hurricane risk they live with every year (there was talk about the insurance business collapsing in Florida before this latest hurricane, largely due to fraud and awful regulation — Bankrate reports that Florida accounts for 9% of the home insurance claims in the US, but 79% of the home insurance lawsuits). So that ...