Ben Carlson

Inflation: The Silent Killer of Your Finances

“I remember the $0.05 hamburger and a $0.40-per-hour minimum wage, so I’ve seen a tremendous amount of inflation in my lifetime. Did it ruin the investment climate? I think not.” – Charlie Munger You can’t see it, but it’s there. Over time it can be a huge unseen risk to your investment portfolio and other…

Of Course…But Maybe: Financial Advice From Louis CK

“Every day starts, my eyes open and I reload the program of misery. I open my eyes, remember who I am, what I’m like, and I just go, ‘Ugh.’” “I don’t stop eating when I’m full. The meal isn’t over when I’m full. It’s over when I hate myself.” – Louis CK Louis CK is…

Does Past Performance Matter?

“Hindsight, the ability to explain the past, gives us the illusion that the world is understandable.” – Daniel Kahneman “Those classes of investments considered ‘best’ change from period to period.  The pathetic fallacy is what are thought to be the best are in truth only the most popular – the most active, the most talked…

How Rising Interest Rates Affect Your Investments

“One of the most important things I’ve learnt over the years is to remember that if you don’t know what is going to happen, don’t structure your portfolio as through you do.” – James Montier According to a recent survey by Edward Jones, 63 % of Americans don’t know how rising interest rates will impact their…

Lessons From The Coffeehouse Investor

“The secret to building a successful common-stock portfolio isn’t to “beat the stock market” over the next two years, it is to capture its entire return over the next two decades.” – Bill Schulteis I’m always interested in finding simple ways to explain the complex topics that are involved in the world of finance. My…

Time to Prepare for the Coming Crash?

“Count the perma bears on the Forbes 400 list or the amount of pessimists who run companies in the Fortune 500.  You will find none.”    – Josh Brown “If you’re constructing a portfolio with an overweight against human ingenuity and progress then you’re likely to lose out over the long-term.” – Cullen Roche A…

The Real World Retirement Calculator

“To make reliable decisions you must always weigh how right you think you are against how sorry you will be if you turn out to be mistaken.” – Jason Zweig One of the most difficult financial planning questions to answer is: How much do I need to retire? According to BlackRock’s Annual Retirement Survey, 50% of…

Advice from Warren Buffett Circa 1975

“Much of Wall Street is a succession of fashions. But fashion-hitting never has been successfully maintained, to my knowledge.” – Warren Buffett Warren Buffett’s advice is worth listening to not just because he is one of the richest men in the world and the greatest investor of all-time. These reasons do carry weight, but the…

James Montier’s Laws of Investing

“The financial industry has perfected the art of turning the simple into the complex, and in doing so managed to extract fees for itself!” – James Montier GMO is one of the largest and most respected investment managers in the asset management industry. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing one of their founders, Jeremy Grantham,…

The Benefits of Thinking Long-Term

“An investor should be aiming primarily at long period results and judged solely by those.” – John Maynard Keynes Mebane Faber, of Cambria Investment Management, recently created an interesting table on his website that has some important implications for investors.