This week Fidelity became the first fund company to offer index funds — a total U.S. stock market fund and an international stock market fund — with an expense ratio of 0%. Fidelity is a massive company that more or less missed the boat on index funds and ETFs when the first wave hit. This…

Slack is a lot like Twitter from my vantage point. It’s a service I use all the time. It’s become an integral part of my life from both a work and social perspective. Every time I talk to someone else who uses the service they share my love for the platform. And it’s almost impossible to explain its usefulness…

On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben we discuss: Facebook’s massive stock price crash. Why my immediate reaction was to buy Facebook after its decline. Why being 30 is so much harder for the current generation than their parent’s. Is trend-following dead? The conflicts of interest that arise when hedge funds have internal…

Charley Ellis is one of my favorite people in the investment business. He seems to always have a similar message but I still come back to that message over and over again because of the way he delivers it. Ellis recently sat down for another chat with Ted Seides on the Capital Allocators podcast. He…

A podcast listener asks: It is my understanding that financial theory proposes that asset prices revert to their long-term mean. If so, does this conjecture apply to interest rates too? Mean reversion is probably one of the most misunderstood concepts in all of finance. On the one hand, it’s misunderstood by performance chasers who don’t…

A reader asked this week if I would update an old performance chart of the S&P 500 I used a few years ago. Here are the S&P 500 calendar year returns shown as a scatter plot: The red line is the average so you can see how wide the fluctuations are from year to year….

Here are some of the realizations I’ve had about finances from being a parent: 1. Yes, kids are expensive but… The personal finance section of any financial publication will be quick to remind you that raising a child can cost upwards of $250,000 from birth through age 18. When you include the obscene cost of daycare…

On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben we discuss: The pie chart heard round the world. Why Michael didn’t create a chart crime. Why concentrated gains are the norm in the stock market. How difficult is it to save $1 million in a 401(k)? The worst advice we’ve seen on 401(k)s. Is AQR the…

This week marks the 31st rendition of the series that’s now the longest-running cable TV event in history which has been viewed by millions of people all around the globe. Shark Week first appeared all the way back in 1988. The series was originally about promoting the conservation of these animals and clearing up any…

The current retirement system leaves much to be desired. There are a decent number of people taking advantage of tax-deferred savings vehicles but it’s a fairly small number that ever reaches millionaire status in these accounts. In Fidelity’s defined contribution plan, there are roughly 157,000 people who have saved at least $1 million in their 401(k)….