My thoughts on the annual Morningstar Conference.

“Nothing fails like success on Wall Street.” – Rick Ferri

“Investment success accrues not so much to the brilliant as to the disciplined.” – William Bernstein In January of 1966 the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a level of 990. It would continue trading in a range of roughly 600 to 1,000 over the following 17 years. It once again reached 990 in December of 1982…

“Unless you can watch your stock holding decline by 50% without becoming panic-stricken, you should not be in the stock market.” – Warren Buffett A good starting point to gauge investment performance is to compare your results against a simple buy and hold portfolio. While there are certainly ways to improve the performance of buy and hold,…

“Fear has a greater grasp on human action than does the impressive weight of historical evidence.” – Jeremy Siegel If I had to narrow down the list of reasons that so many investors have missed out on one of the greatest bull markets in history it would be these two factors: The recency effect has…

“Constantly movin while makin millions.” – Tupac, Me Against the World In my freshmen year high school english class our teacher asked us to name our favorite famous poet. Not being very well-versed in the field of poetry I answered rapper Tupac Shakur (I was only half kidding). Not only is Tupac one of my…

“The difference between the right and wrong perspective is everything.” – Ryan Holiday One of the most important intangibles needed to succeed when investing is the correct perspective on the financial markets. Perspective helps you understand the power of long-term thinking, set your correct time horizon and determine your tolerance for risk. Ryan Holiday explains…

“Temperament is more important than IQ. You need reasonable intelligence, but you absolutely have to have the right temperament. Otherwise, something will snap you.” – Warren Buffett There’s a great scene in the movie Zero Dark Thirty where all of the top CIA operatives hunting down Bin Laden get together to discuss their options once…

“The stock market has predicted nine out of the last five recessions.” – Paul Samuelson The worst historical periods for investment returns have tended to cluster around major economic events such as the Great Depression, the highly inflationary environment of the 1970s and more recently the Great Recession. Stocks are said to be forward looking…

“The most instructive, indeed the only method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitude of fortune, is to recall the catastrophe of others.” – Polybius One of my favorite expressions about the behavior of investors is that we are constantly fighting the last war. The representative heuristic causes us to overweight recent events when…