Don’t Take This Personally

“I wasn’t unlucky, I got outplayed. I got outplayed that time. But I know I’m good enough to sit at that table.” – Mike McD, Rounders With the wild swings in the markets lately, it makes sense that investors are getting nervous. But it becomes a larger issue when you start to take the market’s…

Misery Loves Company

The Wall Street Journal ran a piece this morning about the recent “bloodbath” in performance for a handful of hedge funds.

Why I Love the Stock Market

“The thing that most affects the market is everything.” – James Playsted Wood While it’s never fun to lose money, the past couple of weeks reminded me once again why I love the stock market. Mr. Market is basically a crazy person that takes pride in frustrating people on a consistent basis. Every investor feels…

Trial by Fire

Tom Brakke from The Research Puzzle had a really smart take on the investment industry in a piece last week. In the post he discusses how odd it is that so many investment positions are filled but there’s no training involved after the fact: When you hire an experienced analyst, it’s understandable that the employer…

Common Sense Thoughts on Stock Market Losses

As they say, this drop in the market “feels” different. Stocks have been getting absolutely destroyed. So what’s an investor to do? Phil Pearlman made a very sobering, yet truthful, statement in a post yesterday: Sorry, no one can help you during a market correction. As much as I would like to think that the…

Q&A With Millennial Money Author Patrick O’Shaughnessy

Millennials have been taking some heat for the past couple of years on the state of their finances. My generation needs some financial guidance, sure, but there’s no way they’re going to take it from someone that’s much older than they are. They don’t want a lecture from another generation telling them what they should or…

What Are the Odds We’re Heading For Another Crash?

“The fundamental law of investing is the uncertainty of the future.” – Peter Bernstein Many investors have been hoping for a “healthy” correction to put money to work at lower prices, but corrections never feel healthy when they finally hit. It always feels like this is the big one when losses start to pile up. We…