“Here is part of the tradeoff with diversification. You must be diversified enough to survive bad times or bad luck so that skill and good process can have the chance to pay off over the long term.” – Howard Marks The markets have always acted crazy at times because people are emotional, but investors always…

Just before the market peaked prior to the tech bubble bursting in 2000 Gallup surveyed a group of individual investors to ask for their expected annual stock market returns. On average, these individuals expected the market to return 13.3% over the following year (not even close), but they also expected their own portfolio to earn…

“The average long-term experience in investing is never surprising, but the short- term experience is always surprising.” – Charley Ellis The stock market has basically gone nowhere for a while now. According to the sharp team over at Bespoke Investment Group, the S&P 500 has crossed the 2100 level to the upside 25 times over…

The first investment book I ever read was Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor. This is one of a handful of books you hear mentioned over and over again when you ask investors to name the best investing books of all-time. The edition I read was annotated by Jason Zweig, which was very helpful because he was able…

Robert Shiller has the following definition for a bubble: I define a speculative bubble as a situation in which news of price increases spurs investor enthusiasm, which spreads by psychological contagion from person to person, in the process amplifying stories that might justify the price increases and bringing in a larger and larger class of…

Of the many classic one-liners from the movie Animal House, one of the my favorites is when the dean decides to put the Delta house on double secret probation: I’m always reminded of this clip when I hear about a common practice in the institutional asset management world. Whenever the boards of the various pensions,…

“90% of what passes for brilliance or incompetence in investing is the ebb and flow of investment style.” – Jeremy Grantham The typical fund pitch book has some combination of the following: Our team has X year of combined experience. Our track record set against the S&P 500 is as follows… I understand the need…

Bob Maynard is one of the best investors you’ve probably never heard of. He runs the $14 billion pension fund for the state of Idaho and his long-term returns are consistently in the top quartile of the institutional fund world. The thing that sets Maynard apart from his institutional peers is the fact that he runs…

Investors are constantly bombarded with negatives these days. Everywhere you look there’s someone telling you why you can’t invest in certain asset classes or strategies: You can’t invest in the U.S. because the bull market is getting long in the tooth. You can’t invest internationally because those countries are a mess and what about the…

Bill McBride at Calculated Risk put out a fascinating table on his blog recently that shows the coming changes in the demographics in the United States: These numbers are amazing. In 2020, the most common ages will all be between 25 to 35 years old. I get questions all the time from investors asking me…