Some day I’ll tell my kids how we used to have to listen to talk radio in the morning, wait for a DJ/VJ to play our favorite song/video or buy an entire album when we liked a couple songs by an artist. Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify and podcasts have completely changed the listening game for the…

It seems young people get blamed for everything these days. Millennials have been accused of killing marriage, home ownership, chain restaurants, diamonds, department stores, face-to-face interaction and pretty much every long, boring sporting event imaginable. They’re also being accused of killing their own net worth. Here’s a recent survey from Bankrate.com:        In particular,…

While the markets can become detached from reality from time-to-time, they are still a very humbling place for those who try to take advantage. The consensus can be wildly wrong at the extremes but most of the time it’s actually painful to fight the current. Being a contrarian feels like a superior position to be…

“An asset allocation is like a wet bar of soap – the more frequently you touch it, the more rapidly it disappears.” – William Bernstein The terms bubble and crash get thrown around far too liberally these days, which makes sense since investors can easily see two large boom-and-bust cycles in the rearview mirror. Many…

One of my guiding principles is that less is more and simple beats complex. I was asked recently why this is the case. I wrote a whole book on this topic that even says “Why Simplicity Trumps Complexity in Any Investment Plan” in the title. While I can’t prove this as 100% fact, here are…

The prospect for lower future returns has many institutional investors scrambling for a savior. During the previous cycle, it was hedge funds. That shift in allocations hasn’t worked out so well. So the latest push has seen money pour into private equity in hopes of juicing returns through the use of leverage in the private…

A reader asks: My question to you is what are some of your financial goals? Do you hope to retire early or try to become financially independent someday to quit your job and do something else? I’d love to hear you address the ERE movement. It’s hard to see a week go by these days…

Capital allocation is one of the most important decisions management has to make for corporations. Changes in regulations have made it more important over the years for investors to pay attention to not only dividend yields, but also share buybacks, debt repayment and M&A. This piece I wrote for Bloomberg goes over how things have…

This past Tuesday the NASDAQ Composite fell 1.6%. Then on Thursday, it fell another 1.4%. A few weeks ago it dropped 1.8% on a single day. Since stocks bottomed in March of 2009, the NASDAQ has fallen by 1% or more on nearly 280 occasions, or more than 13% of all trading days. Since its inception…

“Stories are what stick with us. Statistics do not.” – Michael Mauboussin Going into our EBI West Conference I wrote about how excited I was to hear Michael Mauboussin speak. He didn’t disappoint. Mauboussin walked the crowd through a series of stories, examples and behavioral studies to understand how to make better decisions or avoid…