A reader asks: Does your Bond Bear Market note contradict your previous case for bonds? The conclusions are unclear to me. I can see how this could be confusing. In a post last week I discussed the potential for bonds to do well if all the right pieces fall into place which was followed up…
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How To Stay in the Game
Everyone remembers game one of last year’s NBA Finals between Golden State and Cleveland as the JR Smith game. After rebounding a missed free throw with just under 5 seconds left Smith dribbled out the clock, not realizing the Cavs weren’t winning but rather tied with the Warriors. This picture of LeBron’s dismay with Smith…
Who Benefits From a Market Correction?
Jerry Seinfeld is the ultimate “it’s funny because it’s true” comedian. His night guy vs. morning guy slays because this is me all the time: We all have competing ideas and beliefs in our heads on a regular basis. Enjoying yourself in the present vs. delaying gratification for the future. Working hard vs. playing hard. Your…
You Never Know
Steve Martin once described his 18-year stand-up career as, “Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.” In the late-1970s and early-1980s, Martin was perhaps the most popular stand-up act in the world but it almost didn’t happen. He made a promise to himself…
How Often Can You Buy the Dip in Housing?
A podcast listener asks: I know I shouldn’t expect home prices to crater like they did after 2008, but I’m wondering if there is any reasonable expectation that home prices will eventually level off or drop enough to make a buying opportunity. I just want to buy the dip. We discussed this question on the…
9 Underrated Investing Books
I was looking at the best-selling investing books on Amazon the other day and it always amazes me how old some of the books are on this list: Rich Dad, Poor Dad was published in the 1990s. The Intelligent Investor was originally published in 1949. The Millionaire Next Door was 1996. Dave Ramsey’s book came…
The Psychology of Playing the Lottery
On this week’s podcast we discussed some stats from a recent Bloomberg piece about the lottery: The lowest-income households in the U.S. on average spend $412 annually on lottery tickets, which is nearly four times the $105 a year spent by the highest-earning households, according to a study released on Wednesday by Bankrate.com. And almost 3 in 10 Americans…
The Other Failure Risk in VC
Venture capital is one of the most unique forms of investing in the asset management industry. The business model is predicated on the fact that the majority of the early-stage investments made by these funds will fail. In fact, multiple failures are expected. The hope is one big winner — a la Google, eBay, LinkedIn,…
Could Index Funds Become Too Popular?
A reader asks: But follow that thought through – there are any number of other clever investing ideas that seemed like a good idea, and failed once the secret got out. Isn’t indexing one of them? This question was in reference to the piece I wrote called The Half-Life of Investment Strategies that looked at how competition…
The First Modern Investing Advertisement
On a recent episode of the Odd Lots podcast, Tracy Alloway sat down with her Bloomberg colleague Eric Weiner to discuss the history of Wall Street. They tell the story of Louis Engel, an executive for Merrill Lynch who created the first modern advertisement for an investment firm in 1948. Following the Great Depression, most…
