Early in my career I received a very simple, yet powerful piece of advice about the markets: In a bull market you’re not as smart as you think you are and in a bear market you’re not as dumb as you think you are. The problem is that fear and greed don’t always allow us…

How many hedge fund managers would kill for the following performance characteristics over a 40 year time frame? Annual Returns: 7.7% Volatility: 6.9% Number of Up Years: 37 Number of Down Years: 3 Annual Win %: 93% Worst Annual Loss: -2.9% Average Annual Loss: -1.9% Max Drawdown: -12.4% On an absolute and risk-adjusted basis these…

I recently had the chance to talk with Aaron Watson on his podcast, Going Deep with Aaron Watson. We touched on a lot of different topics, including the writing process, networking and investing. We also talked about the institutional investment industry. Aaron asked me what I thought some of the similarities and differences are between…

The Wall Street Journal shared the results of a survey which shows many investors don’t understand how bond math works:

The S&P 500 has outperformed the MSCI World Index each of the past three years and six out of the last eight. This is quite a run when you consider how often U.S. stocks have outperformed the rest of the world’s markets over historically.

This whole low-interest rate environment seems to be getting a little out of hand. On Friday, the Bank of Japan surprised everybody and cut the interest rate they charge banks on excess reserves into negative territory. According to the WSJ, “Over a fifth of global gross domestic product, or 23.1%, will now be produced in…

I just finished The Index Card by Harold Pollack and Helaine Olen. It’s a really good personal finance book for those who need to understand a handful of simple steps you need to take to get your finances in order. I love the idea of narrowing down your financial philosophy so that it fits on an index…

Information is a double-edged sword in the investment industry. Investors now have access to more opinions, analysis, real-time prices and research than ever before. It cannot be overstated how much this has changed the investment landscape when you compare it to how things once were in the pre-Internet stone age of insider tips, expensive research…

Finance is a competitive industry so it’s not surprising that performance numbers are the main focal point. Advertisements always discuss a fund family’s best performing funds. The first thing anyone looks at in a pitch book is a fund’s performance track record. Annual return numbers are the currency in which most investment firms stake their livelihood….

The price of oil seems to be at the forefront of every market and economic conversation these days. That tends to happen when one of the most important commodities on the planet falls 80% in a short period of time. Is it too much supply? Not enough demand? The pricing in of future technological advancements? Speculators?…