I saw the following headline on CNBC last week: This was the first response that popped into my head, as shared on Twitter: This is fairly simple, and some would say obvious, advice on the markets but sometimes investors need to be reminded of the simple and obvious The obvious stuff is often the first…

On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben we discuss: Some proposals from Barron’s on changes Warren Buffett should make at BRK. The latest letter from Howard Marks. Why the ‘mother of all credit bubbles’ isn’t as bad as you might think. Why it makes no sense to compare government debt to household debt….

CNBC’s Art Cashin recently stated on that every decade since 1850 in the U.S. has had a recession. Since the Great Recession ended in 2009, that obviously means we haven’t had one this decade. Someone who thinks correlation implies causation in these things would assume that means we’re due for a recession in the next…

At nearly every conference speech on behavioral psychology I’ve seen over the past decade or so the speaker will invariably ask the audience, “By a show of hands — how many of you think you’re an above average driver?” Of course around 90% of the hands in the room go up and the speaker will make…

A reader asks: If the goal is long-term investing (let us say I will not look at this money for the next 15 years), then does it still make sense to invest in bonds since equities outperform bonds over a long period of time?  Before getting into the mushy psychological stuff, let’s run the numbers…

Ali Malito at MarketWatch kicked a hornet’s nest this week with her piece on how much money people in their 30s should have saved for retirement. This tweet and headline went viral (if you have a sense of humor or are a glutton for Internet punishment, check out the comments and replies to this one): The…

Compound interest may be considered the 8th wonder of the world, but it’s the kind of sight that’s going to take a long time to see in person. The problem for most people is the majority of the gains from compounding come at the end and very few have the patience necessary to get to…

Erwin Schrodinger won the Nobel Prize in physics back in 1933 for his work on quantum theory. Schrodinger is most widely known these days for a theoretical experiment he described about a cat in a box. The experiment went something like this: what if you placed a cat into a box with a hammer, a vial…

My column for Bloomberg this week looked at how the lump sum vs. dollar cost averaging decision may be impacted by the current higher-than-average valuation levels. Investing a large slug of cash is never an easy decision. Investors worry about investing all their cash right before a market crash or not investing it all at…

A number of years ago the firm I worked for went through a lengthy review process of the compensation policies for our investment team. Management was trying to make sure our pay was aligned with industry averages but specifically, they were overhauling our bonus pool. A compensation consultant was brought in. The process took a…