Ben Carlson

The Four Stories Written About Fund Managers

There are really only four different stories that are written about fund managers: The huge success story The huge fund failure The redemption story The can’t-figure-out-what’s-wrong story John Paulson was the huge success story coming out of the financial crisis. Fund failures seem to occur on a regular basis, especially in the hedge fund community…

Some Considerations For Investing Globally

In my last post I looked at a short history of drawdowns in foreign developed stock markets. Investing in international markets may seem like a kick in the pants at the moment. Not only have U.S. stocks been outperforming for some time now, but the losses have been more severe and commonplace overseas. Markets are…

Animal Spirits Episode 36: Black Swan Growth

On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben we discuss: Some things you may not have known about index funds. Why average hedge fund fees are declining (and why most investors will still pay higher fees). Hedge funds and private equity looking to monetize the poor. Why pension funds don’t attract better investment talent….

A Short History of Foreign Stock Market Corrections

Since stocks topped out in late-January, U.S. stocks have moved around a lot but haven’t really gone anywhere. The S&P 500 is down roughly 5% from those levels but is still positive on the year (up around 2-3% depending on when you last checked). International stocks have gotten hit even harder in recent months. The MSCI…

Sustaining Wealth is Harder Than Getting Rich

The Forbes 400 list of the world’s richest people looks fairly similar at the top every year. Buffet, Gates, Bezos, Bloomberg and the Walton family are at the top of the list in some order year in and year out (they’ve been joined by Mark Zuckerberg in recent years as well). But this list isn’t…

Rocket Men Precision

In 1961, John F. Kennedy made the audacious goal to land a man on the moon and have them return safely by the end of the decade. NASA analysts put those chances at 1 in 10 of actually happening. Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission would never have achieved that…

Animal Spirits Episode 35: Individual Alpha

On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben we discuss: Are household allocations to stocks too high? Is Robinhood positioning to be the bank of the future for Millennials? Collective investment trusts are way bigger than we thought. How to plan your personal finances with inconsistent income. The kind of money that can increase…

My Evolution on Asset Allocation

Earlier this week I wrote about how holding can be one of the hardest aspects of investing. Anyone can buy or sell but holding takes discipline. I promised a follow-up to discuss how I handle this. To offer a potential solution I’m going to walk you through my evolution on how I’ve come to think about…

The Best Free Investing Tools on the Web

One of the great things about the Internet is that it’s broken down many of the barriers to information that existed in the past. Investors can now become more informed than ever before if they know where to look and who to trust. You no longer have to go through the gatekeepers to access relevant…

36 Obvious Investment Truths

I saw the following headline on CNBC last week: This was the first response that popped into my head, as shared on Twitter: This is fairly simple, and some would say obvious, advice on the markets but sometimes investors need to be reminded of the simple and obvious The obvious stuff is often the first…