In a 2005 Powerball drawing a strange thing happened. There were 110 people who all picked the same exact lottery numbers — 22, 28, 32, 33 and 39. This group picked 5 out of the 6 numbers correctly, good enough for the 2nd prize. Having 110 people pick the same numbers across 29 different states…
Why Cities Survive & Companies Die
Vienna, Austria is one of my favorite cities on the planet. I spent an entire summer living and studying there in college. It was one of the best experiences of my life. Our classrooms were located in the City Center right across the street from the Vienna State Opera House. It’s a stunning piece of architecture….
If You Must Invest in Commodities, Here’s How
Although they have a poor long-term return profile, commodities go through violent boom and bust periods, which opens them up to other strategies to follow those trends. In this piece for Bloomberg I looked at some of those strategies as well as other options for investing in commodities for those looking for this type of…
The Prudent Endowment Fund
My first boss in this industry was old school. One of the first things he taught me to help understand the institutional investment landscape was the Prudent Man Rule. This was a piece of legislation from the 1800s that basically outlined the idea behind being a fiduciary when managing assets for other people. The Prudent…
The End of the Go-Go Years
There are some residual scars remaining from the Great Financial Crisis but it feels like a distant memory in many respects. Most people seem to have moved on. That didn’t happen quite so quickly following the Great Depression. Those involved had memories of that crash that lingered for decades. People more or less stopped going…
Income Alpha
There’s so much going on in the markets that it’s hard to think in terms of a goals-based framework when investing. Paying attention to the best-performing stocks, digging through the 52-week low list for bargains or trying to figure out when the next recession will hit are all much more exciting activities than figuring out…
Commodities Are Meant For Trading, Not Investing
Unless you were operating in the trading pits like Billy Ray Valentine in Trading Places, it was basically impossible to invest in commodities for the average investor until the 1990s. But no one really paid attention to commodities until the huge boom in the mid-2000s. Price tends to drive narratives so most investors felt they…
Social Proof in the Markets
The world has a strange way of not ending, despite the prognostications for the end of days by a number of cult leaders over the years. One such false prophecy was studied by a group of researchers from the University of Minnesota who joined a cult in Chicago incognito to study it from the inside. The…
How Millennials Can Prepare For the Next Financial Crisis
Last week I received a report from Fundrise that included a survey on the preparedness of Millennials for the next financial crisis. The majority of young people aren’t too confident: They also found that nearly half of this group feels there’s nothing they can do about it. Maybe for some there is nothing they can…
Why I Love Writing About the Markets
A few people have asked me in the past week how I find the time to write so much. There are a number of explanations for this — its part of my routine, I prioritize it and I don’t have a ton of other hobbies (no fantasy football, no Facebook, no drinks with friends every night,…
