Time for another round of reader questions. Feel free to reach out with any feedback or questions and I’ll try to do this once a month or so if people are interested. Q. Do you have any advice in regards to technical skills that aspiring analyst should try and acquire that may add incremental value…

Another well-know hedge fund manager announced this week that it’s closing shop. Richard Perry, of Perry Capital Management, decided to close the firm’s flagship fund and send the majority of capital back to investors. This was once one of the largest hedge funds in the industry and has been around for almost three decades, so…

The equity risk premium is the academic definition of the idea that stocks should outperform the risk free rate over the long-term. The risk free rate to be used is up for debate, but using the 10 year treasury bond as a proxy gives us a historical equity risk premium of about 4.5% per year…

“When experts are wrong, it’s often because they’re experts on an earlier version of the world.” – Paul Graham One of the most dangerous places to be as an investor is when you’re the smartest person in the room. Smarts, when not combined with a heavy dose of humility, can get you into trouble because…

A few weeks ago I talked with Robin Powell about our upcoming Evidence-Based Investing Conference and a host of other topics. He asked me what my motives are for writing this blog. I don’t usually put much thought into this but here’s my answer: I was never much of a writer before starting my site, but…

I grew up in the finance industry working in the institutional consulting world. Most consultants provide a wide range of services but what they’re all really selling is their due diligence capabilities for choosing money managers to invest on behalf of these large pools of capital. They often use buzzwords like ‘alpha’ and ‘access’ to get…

The value premium has been talked about in investment circles going all the way back to the 1934 release of Benjamin Graham’s Security Analysis. At its core value investing relies on buying undervalued securities, something every investor can or should be able to intuitively understand. You buy stocks for less than their fundamental value, wait until that…

Thinking and acting long-term for the long-term is one of the few edges remaining in the markets. Bring up this idea and there will almost always be someone waiting to take the other side with the ‘what about Japan?’ argument. Japan’s two-and-half decade economic and market struggles make for some important lessons but most investors…

I started working with the team at Ritholtz Wealth Management one year ago this week. It’s been a wonderful experience so far to work with such great colleagues and clients. But it’s also been a great learning experience for me, as well. I had never worked for an RIA (registered independent advisor) before. My previous roles…

I caught Vanguard’s John Bogle on a recent Bloomberg interview discussing his simple formula for estimating future stock market returns: I have a reasonable expectations kind of formula that I’ve been using for 25 years and it’s worked the whole 25 years almost perfectly. There’s some decades where it doesn’t work as well as it…