On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben we discuss: Is it time for Sell in May blog posts to go away? By 2020 the top 10 most common ages in the U.S. will all be between 26 to 35. Will Millennials and HGTV cause the next housing bubble? Are tech stocks a micro…
Larry Kudlow’s Strong Dollar is Easier Said Than Done
In the hierarchy of difficulty in terms of predicting the outcomes of certain markets, you would be hard-pressed to figure out a harder segment to forecast than currencies. There are trillions of dollars traded every day, the markets are open 24/7 and the variables that impact these movements are nearly endless. The outcomes of market…
Schrodinger’s Portfolio
Erwin Schrodinger won the Nobel Prize in physics back in 1933 for his work on quantum theory. Schrodinger is most widely known these days for a theoretical experiment he described about a cat in a box. The experiment went something like this: what if you placed a cat into a box with a hammer, a vial…
50 Ways The World is Getting Better
“I am not an optimist. I am a very serious possibilist.” – Hans Rosling You don’t have to look too far to find negativity these days. Just watch the news, go on social media, or even have conversations with friends, family members, or co-workers. You’ll likely hear or read about political instability, natural disasters, murder,…
Animal Spirits Episode 26: The Collaborative Podcast
On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben, we welcomed on our first ever guest host, Morgan Housel from Collaborative Fund. The three of us discussed: Who should invest in private companies? How in the world do you pick top quartile venture capital funds? Is it possible to invest privately using quantitative tools? The…
Who Benefits From Rising Interest Rates?
Rising interest rates are almost always framed in terms of risk — bonds will lose money, stocks will lose money, the economy is overheating, etc. Rarely are rising rates framed in terms of who benefits. This piece I wrote fro Bloomberg looks at the groups who could see a positive impact from rising interest rates….
Trading One Risk For Another
I was in Chicago last week visiting our new office (awesome location in the West Loop). I was there with Barry Ritholtz and Kris Venne meeting clients and prospects and visiting with our new colleagues Brian, Jonathan, Anna, and Colleen. Barry was out of the office all week so he was running older posts from the…
The Luck of the Draw When Diversifying Across Time
My column for Bloomberg this week looked at how the lump sum vs. dollar cost averaging decision may be impacted by the current higher-than-average valuation levels. Investing a large slug of cash is never an easy decision. Investors worry about investing all their cash right before a market crash or not investing it all at…
The Tyranny of Benchmarking
A number of years ago the firm I worked for went through a lengthy review process of the compensation policies for our investment team. Management was trying to make sure our pay was aligned with industry averages but specifically, they were overhauling our bonus pool. A compensation consultant was brought in. The process took a…
Animal Spirits Episode 25: Some Things We Learned
On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben we discuss: Why the next recession won’t look like the last one. Why investors are always fighting the last war. Is it now contrarian to predict higher expected returns? What could cause the future to look better than the past in the markets? The staggering growth…
