One of the more interesting finance stories to come out this week was the $1 billion buyout of the Dollar Shave Club by Unilever. Dollar Shave Club was founded in 2011 with some simple ideas — let’s sell low-cost razors to men by utilize some interesting marketing platforms and cut out all of the usual overhead that causes…

One of biggest lessons I learned early on in my career was the importance of asking questions. It took me a while, but I think being inquisitive is a great trait to have because the process of learning doesn’t have an end date. There is always more to learn. But I think you also have…

It’s now been more than seven years since the official end of the last recession. In that time investors have been inundated with double dip recession calls, tales of increased uncertainty and warnings of higher volatility. Everyone was so shell-shocked by the Great Recession that it became easy to assume that catastrophe and economic upheaval…

Spencer Jakab has a great new book out called Heads I Win, Tails I Win: Why Smart Investors Fail and How to Tilt the Odds in Your Favor.  Jakab is currently a columnist at the Wall Street Journal, but also spent part of his career as a sell side research analyst. The fact that he is…

“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,…