The stock market was closed yesterday in observance of the President’s Day holiday. Markets are also closed every year on New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, George Washington’s birthday, Good Friday, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Beyond holidays the stock market has a history of extended shutdowns for various reasons including…

This past week Vanguard surpassed $4 trillion in assets under management. This is impressive on a number of levels, especially when you consider they just passed the $1 trillion mark less than ten years ago and that time frame includes the worst stock market crash since the Great Depression. Here are some more stats to that…

One of the biggest benefits of innovations in technology, communication platforms, and social networks is the ability to gain access to a wide variety of conferences, events, and speeches that would have been nearly impossible to listen to or view in the past. Charlie Munger held court at the annual meeting for the Daily Journal…

Gus Sauter, the former investment chief at Vanguard, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal earlier this week with some important information for retirement savers to consider: In fact, 56.4% of all 50-year-old women are expected to live longer than their life expectancy of 83 years, and, similarly, 55.4% of all men are expected…

There’s an old personal finance rule of thumb called the 50/30/20 rule that states you should spend roughly 50% of your income on necessities (housing, transportation, healthcare and other bills), 30% of your income on wants (dining out, travel, entertainment, etc.) and 20% of your income on savings or paying off debt. Life is never…

I had a financial advisor reach out to me recently with some questions about implementing some changes to his firm’s asset allocation models. It served as a good reminder about the importance of asset allocation in the investment process. Few investment decisions matter more than asset allocation but many investors choose to focus their attention elsewhere….

While doing some research this week I pulled out my old copy of Meir Statman’s book What Investors Really Want and came across this gem on what most investors are looking for: We want high returns from our investments, but we want much more. We want to nurture hope for riches and banish fear of poverty. We…

When I wrote my first book a few years ago I went through a traditional publisher — John Wiley & Sons. It never occurred to me that I would ever write a book so getting something published was very gratifying and I learned a lot from the experience. For my new book (shameless self-promotion –…

One thing you learn after spending a considerable amount of time in the institutional investment world is that the various fund types in this space are kind of like high school kids. They all end up forming their own cliques along with their own unique traits among group members. In one group you have pension…

In the hierarchy of institutional investors, you won’t find a more competitive group than college endowments. They’re in constant competition with one another and the markets. It’s almost like a bizarre finance version of Duke-North Carolina in basketball or Michigan-Ohio State in football. Endowment funds try to invest in only the best money managers –…