With apologies to Steve Harvey, here are my financial market awards for 2015: Best Streak: The S&P 500 is up 7 years in a row.* Sure, it’s only up 3% or so this year, but think about all of the worry and doom and gloom since 2009. The fact that the broad stock market hasn’t had…

With just a few more days remaining in 2015, the market — as measured by the S&P 500 — has basically gone nowhere this year:

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard is something of a reluctant businessman. He never set out to create one of the most well-known clothing and outdoor brands on the planet. Everything he made during the first few years of the company was gear that him and his friends could use on their expeditions when they went mountain climbing…

This was the first year I made the transition to do the majority of my reading digitally. It takes some getting used to, but I’ve found the Kindle Paperwhite to be one of my favorite new pieces of technology. It’s lightweight and the screen quality is amazing — no glare from the sunlight, works in…

Long/short funds are one of those strategies that is wonderful in theory but very difficult to pull off successfully in practice. These funds go long the stocks they think are going to rise and go short the stocks they think are going to fall. So they should be able to make money in a wide…

In the latest issue of the Financial Analysts Journal, Vanguard’s John Bogle penned quite the reflection piece on index funds. It was part history lesson and part victory lap on the rise of the low-cost investing revolution:

If you’re a member at a gym and go on a regular basis you’re probably familiar with the January effect. Without fail, after the 1st of the year, gyms across the country fill up with people who made New Year’s resolutions to get in shape. It’s by far the busiest time of the year (for…

Neil Irwin had a really great write-up at The Upshot this week about the history of interest rates. He made the case that low interest rates may be here to stay if history is any guide. Take a look at the graph he used in the story:

Remember when the Fed was never going to raise interest rates?

If you really want to find a scapegoat for volatility or losses in your portfolio, you don’t have to look very far. The financial media and investors who lack self-awareness are very quick to point a finger after seeing their holdings fall for a number of reasons — high frequency trading, the Fed, risk parity,…