Ben Carlson

Why Does Buy and Hold Have to be Impossible?

“Wealth isn’t primarily determined by investment performance, but by investment behavior.” – Nick Murray Dr. Andrew Lo, a finance professor at MIT, recently shared his thoughts on a long-term, buy and hold strategy to Chuck Jaffe of MarketWatch: That might sound like good advice because on paper when you take a look at the S&P over…

Life Expectancy and Longevity Risk

“It makes little sense that we should care about a bad day or a bad year in the stock market if it provides us with good long-term returns.” – William Bernstein Bill McBride at Calculated Risk shared an amazing stat a few weeks ago: Imagine if you were born in 1900. You’d have a 23%…

Unlearning From Peter Bernstein

“I don’t think that many investors have learned that the more you press, the more problems you get into.” – Peter Bernstein By far the best thing I read this week was an article by Jason Zweig. It had nothing to do with current events or risks in the markets. In fact, it was published…

How Investment Performance Affects Savings Rates

“There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” – Harry Truman The 1980s and 1990s was a period of unprecedented financial market performance. These are the annual 220-year return numbers for simple total stock and total bond portfolio invested in the U.S. markets: These return numbers are absolutely mind-blowing…

Benjamin Graham: Father of the Efficient Market Hypothesis?

“Warren [Buffett], don’t worry too much about making money. It won’t change the way you live. It’ll change the way your wife lives.” – Benjamin Graham The first investment book I ever read was The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. Graham’s analogy about Mr. Market that he used to describe the stock market is still…

Retirement Concerns

“The real purpose of saving is to empower you to keep your priorities – not to make you sacrifice.” – Charley Ellis BlackRock recently released the results from a survey asking investors about their five biggest retirement concerns. Here they are in order: 1. How do I start saving for retirement? 2. Am I investing…

“Are you bullish or bearish?”

“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.” – Charles Kettering Are you bullish or bearish on the market? I get this question a lot. Obviously I have my feelings on the attractiveness of the different stock markets. But in the grand scheme of things,…