Ben Carlson

Animal Spirits: Millennials on Communism

This week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben is supported by YCharts: Mention Animal Spirits and receive 20% off your subscription price when you initially sign up for the service. We discuss: The future of books Why the future of publishing is all Amazon Why the relationship between markets and geopolitics isn’t as simple as you’d think Why…

I Gotta Say, It Was a Good Year

2019 was a good year for risk assets. Basically everything worked this past year: Large caps, mid caps, small caps, foreign stocks, emerging markets, REITs, bonds, TIPS, and gold were all much higher in 2019. If you couldn’t make money last year you were extremely unlucky, concentrated in the wrong securities or betting against the…

Animal Spirits: Everybody’s Busy

On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben… We discuss: Why do Americans work so much? Why hasn’t innovation made us happier? Tech bros vs finance bros Shopify’s approach to running a happier organization Why “busy” is such a crutch Why most private equity associates and MDs feel underpaid Is college becoming less important…

Peter Lynch: The Barry Sanders of Investing

One Up on Wall Street is one of the first 5 or 6 investing books I read early on in my career when I still knew nothing about how the markets operate. I enjoyed it mostly because Lynch’s affection for the markets is infectious. His love for the game of investing leaps off the pages…

The Awful Economy Paul Volcker Inherited in 1979

The 2007-2009 economic crisis was an all-time horrible situation not only for all of us normal people who had to live through it but also those central bankers who had to figure out how to save a sinking ship. They basically threw the kitchen sink at the problem and we’re all better off for it…