Everyone’s been talking about the Mad Men series finale lately. I’ll spare you my opinion on Don, Betty and Peggy’s swan song, but I’ve been a huge fan of the show since day one. Midway through the final season, Don Draper was finalizing his divorce with former secretary-turned-failing-actress Megan. To save both of them the…
How Do You Utilize 2nd Level Thinking?
“If you don’t have superior insight, how can something be to your advantage?” – Howard Marks Last week I had the chance to speak to a group of finance students at Drexel University about my experiences in the investment industry. I tried to share with these students some of the things I wish I had been…
The Four Pillars of Retirement Savings
I read plenty of stories in the financial media about the coming retirement crisis, but I see far fewer people willing to offer legitimate solutions to the problem of under-saving by the majority of Americans. Legendary author and investor Charley Ellis put out a book at the end of last year — Falling Short: The Coming…
Are Long-Term Bonds Worth the Risk?
A couple weeks I looked at the history of corrections in long-term U.S. treasury bonds. I received a few follow-up questions from people asking for the same information on intermediate bonds for a comparison between the different bond maturities from a risk perspective. The Barclays Aggregate Index, the industry standard for an intermediate bond benchmark,…
Is This the Top?
The Opportunity in Active ETFs
Last week on a trip to Philadelphia I had the chance to hangout with my friends at Alpha Architect to learn more about the ETF business from Wes Gray and his team. Here are a few takeaways:
Finding the Limitations in Your Investment Process
I attended a conference recently where one of the speakers was the head portfolio manager of legendary investor George Soros’s family office. This guy was good. He touched on nearly every hot button issue in the markets and the the economy. After giving his take on the state of the markets and where he was…
How Often Are Markets “Normal?”
Stock market prices are artificially high. Bond market yields are artificially low. Valuations are at unsustainable levels. It’s all paper gains that will be erased eventually. We need a more normalized environment. Investors and pundits have been hammering these points home for some time now. And there is some legitimacy to the idea that interest…
Liquidity Risk: Same as It Ever Was
For the past two to three years now I’ve read article after article about the potential for market dislocations during the next downturn because of liquidity issues in certain areas of the market. It’s now easier than ever to invest in almost any type of security or market you can think of through ETFs or…
Should You Use Volatility to Make Asset Allocation Decisions?
Fusion’s Felix Salmon got the dreaded pundit call-out this week for making a video telling people to sell their stocks in the after-math of the flash crash in 2010, as seen here:
