On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben we discuss: The story in the WSJ that brought tears of joy to Michael. How retirement investors are getting more intelligent. The growing importance of target-date funds. Gen Z’s retirement plans need some work. Why college might not cost as much as you think. Most people…

A podcast listener asked Michael and I the following: Wanted to get your thoughts on the concept of stocks for the long run and why the investing world all generally agrees that over long time periods stocks will be up big. Why do stocks generally go up over time and why can we expect them…

We’re thrilled this month to add Blair duQuesnay as an advisor at RWM. Blair has a wide range of experience in the financial services industry from starting her own firm to working with clients and families on their financial plans to writing long-form investment research pieces. Blair is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and has the…

CNBC’s Art Cashin recently stated on that every decade since 1850 in the U.S. has had a recession. Since the Great Recession ended in 2009, that obviously means we haven’t had one this decade. Someone who thinks correlation implies causation in these things would assume that means we’re due for a recession in the next…

Morgan Housel wrote a great post this week about Useful Hacks. Here’s an example I liked: Writing hack: Write every day for years. I’m often asked by people on how they can improve their writing or blogs or client communications. This is pretty much it. Write more. I’m all for efficiency but at a certain…

Michael Batnick’s new book, Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments came out this week. There are far too many investing books that dissect the past successes of history’s greatest investors. These books make it easy for investors to assume emulating these greats should be effortless. I know that’s what I thought when I…

On this week’s Animal Spirits with Micahel & Ben we discuss: Michael’s new book (released today!): Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments Where Michael came up with the idea for his book and how it felt to write about his own mistakes Where the value and momentum premiums come from Why investing…

The latest fertility numbers in the U.S. make it appear as though the Handmaid’s Tale could be fast approaching (via the Wall Street Journal): American women are having children at the lowest rate on record, with the number of babies born in the U.S. last year dropping to a 30-year low, federal figures released Thursday showed. Some 3.85…

Institutional investors are going to have a difficult time hitting their return bogeys in the years ahead. Stock market valuations are well above long-term averages while interest rates are well below what fixed income investors are used to. This will make it exceedingly difficult for pensions to close their funding gaps or endowments and foundations…

The number of stocks in the U.S. has more than halved since 1997, falling from roughly 7,000 to around 3,400. This chart from Dimensional Fund Advisors shows how the rest of the world has more than made up for this decline in U.S. names: Since 1997, stocks outside of the U.S. have doubled, from roughly…