Standing on the shoulders of giants by learning from the best in a given field is a great way to get a better grasp of your subject matter of choice. A favorite pastime for investors is to read and share quotes from the likes of Warren Buffett, Paul Tudor Jones, Jesse Livermore or any number…
A Historical Look at a 50/50 Portfolio
Last year I wrote about the worst 10 year returns earned on a simple 50/50 portfolio of stocks and bonds. A reader recently dug up that post and asked for some further information and a look at different scenarios on the returns of a 50/50 portfolio made up of the S&P 500 and long-term U.S….
Do Young Investors Need a Financial Advisor?
A couple weeks ago I gave some advice to a young person that was invested with a robo-advisor. I urged patience and giving up on the goal of a perfect portfolio, especially when you come to the decision that you would like to invest in a low-cost, diversified asset allocation approach. One of my younger…
What Would You Say…You Do Here?
One of the most interesting lines from the new Carl Richards book is when he talks about how hard it is to decipher the many different roles in the financial industry I know of no other industry where it’s harder to figure out who does what. It’s easy to shake your head when you read a…
A Closer Look at the U.S. Government’s Retirement Plan
The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) is the defined contribution retirement plan for U.S. Federal government employees. The TSP has nearly 5 million participants and over $500 billion in assets under management. I’m on record saying I think the TSP should be offered to all U.S. workers in addition to their current plan (or those that…
The Behavior Gap Financial Plan
“The One Page Financial Plan isn’t about getting things “right.” It’s realizing that you will always get things a little wrong.” – Carl Richards Carl Richards is one of my favorite finance writers. His message is always clear and easy to understand. He doesn’t try to confuse people or use scare tactics. The drawings he puts…
Buffett’s Performance by Decade
I ran some numbers on Warren Buffett’s performance for a post this week (see Two Finance Phrases I Could Do Without) which led me to run some different calculations on Berkshire Hathaway’s returns over the years. I have never seen Buffett’s performance broken out by decade. These are the annual returns against the S&P 500…
Competing Ideologies
One of the most difficult aspects of investing is that to create a successful investment process you have to get used to the fact that you’re bound to have competing ideologies at times depending on where we are in the investment cycle.
Two Finance Phrases I Could Do Without
There are many market analogies and cliches that can actually be useful, but there are plenty that are useless or could use some context. Here are two phrases I hear all the time that I could do without. “The easy money has been made.” The Warren Buffett Way by Robert Hagstrom was published in 1994….
Bonds Are Supposed to be Boring
Earlier this week I posted a handful of graphs that showed rolling returns for the stock market over various time frames. The point was to show how much variation in performance there’s been historically over shorter time frames compared with a much narrower range in long-term returns. A few people asked me to show similar charts…
