There are some residual scars remaining from the Great Financial Crisis but it feels like a distant memory in many respects. Most people seem to have moved on. That didn’t happen quite so quickly following the Great Depression. Those involved had memories of that crash that lingered for decades. People more or less stopped going…

There’s so much going on in the markets that it’s hard to think in terms of a goals-based framework when investing. Paying attention to the best-performing stocks, digging through the 52-week low list for bargains or trying to figure out when the next recession will hit are all much more exciting activities than figuring out…

Unless you were operating in the trading pits like Billy Ray Valentine in Trading Places, it was basically impossible to invest in commodities for the average investor until the 1990s. But no one really paid attention to commodities until the huge boom in the mid-2000s. Price tends to drive narratives so most investors felt they…

The world has a strange way of not ending, despite the prognostications for the end of days by a number of cult leaders over the years. One such false prophecy was studied by a group of researchers from the University of Minnesota who joined a cult in Chicago incognito to study it from the inside. The…

Last week I received a report from Fundrise that included a survey on the preparedness of Millennials for the next financial crisis. The majority of young people aren’t too confident: They also found that nearly half of this group feels there’s nothing they can do about it. Maybe for some there is nothing they can…

A few people have asked me in the past week how I find the time to write so much. There are a number of explanations for this — its part of my routine, I prioritize it and I don’t have a ton of other hobbies (no fantasy football, no Facebook, no drinks with friends every night,…

These days anytime something goes up someone is almost sure to call it a bubble. This is especially true of anything that resides in the public eye. Index funds and ETFs fit the bill here which has led to a chorus of investors, mostly of the active fund management variety, to call these products a…

At some presentations I gave last week I included the following slide: These quotes come from an interview legendary hedge fund investor Seth Klarman gave to the Wall Street Journal. Klarman isn’t as well known to the general investing public as some of his peers but his track record ranks right up there in terms of the…

In my 36 Obvious Investment Truths, number 24 stated: 24. Most backtests work better on a spreadsheet than in the real world because of competition, taxes, transaction costs and the fact that you can’t backtest your emotions. Anyone in the investment business knows there’s no such thing as a bad backtest (although the recycle bin…

This week I took a short tour of the Midwest to give talks to the CFA Society of Louisville and the CFA Society of Indianapolis. Both were great audiences that asked some in depth questions and provided some good feedback, as well. A number of people also asked me to share the slides from my…