Tom Brakke from The Research Puzzle had a really smart take on the investment industry in a piece last week. In the post he discusses how odd it is that so many investment positions are filled but there’s no training involved after the fact: When you hire an experienced analyst, it’s understandable that the employer…

As they say, this drop in the market “feels” different. Stocks have been getting absolutely destroyed. So what’s an investor to do? Phil Pearlman made a very sobering, yet truthful, statement in a post yesterday: Sorry, no one can help you during a market correction. As much as I would like to think that the…

“Investment philosophy is really about temperament, not raw intellect. In fact, proper temperament will beat high IQ all day.” – Michael Mauboussin

Millennials have been taking some heat for the past couple of years on the state of their finances. My generation needs some financial guidance, sure, but there’s no way they’re going to take it from someone that’s much older than they are. They don’t want a lecture from another generation telling them what they should or…

“The fundamental law of investing is the uncertainty of the future.” – Peter Bernstein Many investors have been hoping for a “healthy” correction to put money to work at lower prices, but corrections never feel healthy when they finally hit. It always feels like this is the big one when losses start to pile up. We…

“The higher the VIX the higher the clicks.” – Phil Pearlman

“People who rely heavily on forecasts seem to think there’s only one possibility, meaning risk can be eliminated if they just figure it out.” – Howard Marks

The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded this morning to a French author by the name of Patrick Modiano. Modiano has written more than 20 novels, with the first one published in 1968. What I found interesting about his story is that he said he is “always writing the same book.” Here’s more: Modiano says…

“A relative-performance-oriented investor is generally unwilling or unable to tolerate long periods of underperformance and therefore invests in whatever is currently popular.” – Seth Klarman

It was a tough couple of days for star portfolio manager Bruce Berkowitz’s Fairholme Fund (FAIRX) last week. The fund lost nearly 10% on the week, with much of that loss coming on a single day. Over the past month it’s down more than 13% even though the S&P 500 is down less than 2%.