Last week the Financial Planning Association released its annual investment survey of financial advisors — 2017 Trends in Investing Survey: Where Financial Advisors are Investing Now. The survey consists of responses from over 300 financial advisors to various questions about how this group is thinking about the current investment landscape. There were a few data points in the…
Reframing the Concept of Risk
My wife and I were in a hospital room a few weeks ago waiting to go into the operating room for her c-section for the birth of our twins. She had to answer a bunch of questions, fill out a seemingly endless pile of paperwork and listen to various doctors and nurses describe what was going to happen…
Don’t Be Fooled By High Dividend Yields
One of the market myths I covered in my book is that a higher yield makes something a safer or better investment. Income alone doesn’t tell the entire story. You have to look at total return and the risks involved with those higher yields. This piece I wrote for Bloomberg looks at the risks involved…
Anecdotal Real Estate Market Observations
I’ve been documenting my home selling and buying experience for the past year or so (see here, here and here). This is the first time I’ve gone through the sale process so it’s been a good learning experience. Since most people don’t go through this process very often I thought it would be helpful to…
How Many Will Stay the Course During the Next Bear Market?
Markets always seem easy when looking through the rearview mirror because knowing what already happened makes us all feel that everything in the past was blatantly obvious. It makes us feel that we would perfectly navigate those markets if only we had the chance to invest in the same scenario again. Hindsight Capital LLC never…
My Interview on What’d You Miss
Yesterday I had a great time talking about the stock market with Joe Weisenthal, Scarlet Fu and Julia Chatterley on Bloomberg’s What’d You Miss. Here’s my segment discussing the concept of market breadth which was the topic of my most recent Bloomberg piece from earlier this week. Enjoy and have a great holiday weekend: And here’s the…
Knowing Where Your Financial Destination Is
I get a lot of questions from people about how they should invest their money and which specific investments they should focus on. What should my asset allocation look like? Which funds should I pick in my 401k? Should I own individuals securities, mutual funds or ETFs? Which ones? Should I change my current portfolio…
How the Bond Bull Market Distorted Fixed Income Expectations
Bonds will provide an interesting case study in investor behavior in the years ahead. With interest rates at much lower levels than they have been in the recent past the same change in rates will now lead to much more volatility in bonds than it would have at the higher rates seen in the past….
Barriers to Entry in the Markets
I’ve spent the majority of my career performing due diligence on a wide variety of money managers, funds, and investment strategies. The due diligence process involves far more art than science but I’ve always found that it’s more helpful to use the process of elimination by spotting red flags rather than seeking out the perfect…
Q&A With Wes Gray & Jack Vogel on Liquid Alts
A couple weeks ago when I wrote about my evolution on asset allocation I said that I’ve learned a lot on the topic from Wes Gray and Jack Vogel at Alpha Architect. I’m in the middle of handling a new set of twins, but last week I had a chance to chat with these two to discuss their…