Hedge funds are a lightning rod in the financial industry. The most vocal critics and proponents both offer extreme views that paint a very different picture of the same topic. Some will bash hedge funds no matter what while others rush to their defense anytime they’re criticized. On the one hand you have the critics…

Every time something unexpected occurs in the markets people immediately flip out like something is broken. The markets are constantly surprising in a number of ways, but most of the things that seem completely out of the ordinary have happened in some form or another in the past.

One of the things I’m most excited about in my new role is the fact that I’ll get to talk much more about my experience and thoughts on the institutional side of the business, where I’ve spent my career. I’ll be sharing more of this side of things on the blog, but I also now have…

From the highs reached in early spring, the S&P 500 is now down roughly 12%. International stocks (MSCI EAFE) and small caps (Russell 2000) are down even more, as both have fallen roughly 17% from their 52-week highs.

Last week I looked at how duration affects bond market returns and volatility (see Understanding Bond Market Duration & Volatility) and received a number of questions and comments about intermediate-term bonds. The conclusion many readers came to from my post is that intermediate maturity bonds are the sweet spot in terms of balancing out risk…

If I had the power to go back in time and tell the past version of myself from ten or fifteen years ago about Twitter I don’t think I would be able to explain it to myself. It’s one of those things that really makes no sense until you get a feel for it and…

“Simplicity has a way of improving performance through enabling us to better understand what we are doing.” – Charlie Munger Tren Griffin tells a great joke in his new Charlie Munger book that describes the needless complexity many intelligent people try to inject into the decision-making process: Too many people take a situation and create complexity…

One of the most important things you can do as an investors is focus on what you control. This is true when building a portfolio or investment plan, but it also concerns how you think about what’s going to happen in the future. Setting realistic expectations is one of the more under-appreciated aspects of surviving…

I’m a huge fan of standing on the shoulders of giants to learn as much as I can from others. When I started this website a couple years ago one of the first things I did was study the writing styles and websites of some of my favorite blogs. The two that I spent the…

In the early 1900s, Thomas Edison’s factory that housed the majority of his many inventions and projects was destroyed by a fire. At age 67, it contained his life’s work. The next morning, while searching through the rubble, Edison told his son, “There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank…