I finally got around to watching the Warren Buffett documentary on HBO last week. It was a tad on the slow side but if you’re a Buffett fan it’s worth watching. At one point they showed a picture of his office which is fairly plain for one of the richest people on the planet. On the…

I had the pleasure of giving the keynote presentation at the American Banker’s Association Wealth Management Conference in New Orleans earlier this week. It was my first time in New Orleans and I really loved the city. The architecture, the people, the food and the pre-Mardi Gras parades were a few of my favorite highlights. The…

Barry Ritholtz, Kris Venne, and I will be traveling to Texas at the end of March with planned stops in both Houston and Austin. I’ve never been to either city so I’m looking forward to this trip. Technology makes it easier than ever to communicate with people all over the place but a few times…

The S&P 500 was originally created in 1957 and it only contained 233 stocks (results going back further than that have been recreated to reflect historical performance numbers). The first index fund seeking to track the S&P 500 wasn’t created until the early-1970s when Wells Fargo put something together for pension funds to invest in. The…

The stock market was closed yesterday in observance of the President’s Day holiday. Markets are also closed every year on New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, George Washington’s birthday, Good Friday, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Beyond holidays the stock market has a history of extended shutdowns for various reasons including…

This past week Vanguard surpassed $4 trillion in assets under management. This is impressive on a number of levels, especially when you consider they just passed the $1 trillion mark less than ten years ago and that time frame includes the worst stock market crash since the Great Depression. Here are some more stats to that…

One of the biggest benefits of innovations in technology, communication platforms, and social networks is the ability to gain access to a wide variety of conferences, events, and speeches that would have been nearly impossible to listen to or view in the past. Charlie Munger held court at the annual meeting for the Daily Journal…

Gus Sauter, the former investment chief at Vanguard, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal earlier this week with some important information for retirement savers to consider: In fact, 56.4% of all 50-year-old women are expected to live longer than their life expectancy of 83 years, and, similarly, 55.4% of all men are expected…

There’s an old personal finance rule of thumb called the 50/30/20 rule that states you should spend roughly 50% of your income on necessities (housing, transportation, healthcare and other bills), 30% of your income on wants (dining out, travel, entertainment, etc.) and 20% of your income on savings or paying off debt. Life is never…

I had a financial advisor reach out to me recently with some questions about implementing some changes to his firm’s asset allocation models. It served as a good reminder about the importance of asset allocation in the investment process. Few investment decisions matter more than asset allocation but many investors choose to focus their attention elsewhere….