“I’m intimidated by my financial adviser, he knows how little I know.” – Daniel Kahneman The Wall Street Journal recently shared an interesting piece of news about Bill Gross’s new fund with Janus Capital. Investors poured $1.1 billion, an important threshold for attracting institutional clients, into his brand new unconstrained bond fund. That’s a pretty…
A Dozen Things I’ve Learned From Tren Griffin
Tren Griffin writes one of my favorite blogs at 25iq.com. His ongoing series of a dozen things he’s learned from various investors, business leaders, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs and is an amazing collection of quotes and insights. I always look forward to these posts because I every time I learn something new.
The Real Risk to a 60/40 Portfolio
A recent Fidelity poll of financial advisors found that their biggest worry right now is rising interest rates over all else. It’s ironic that so many people are worried about rising rates when all rates continue to do is fall. These advisors are not alone as many investors are worried about the future prospects for…
Questions Most Investors Don’t Ask
Early in my career I was given a great piece of advice — if you want to learn, just keep asking questions. Some people are nervous that they’ll sound unintelligent by asking too many questions but I’ve always found that asking questions is a true form of intelligence. It shows that you care about the…
Would Keynes Have Been Fired as a Money Manager Today?
“Investing is intolerably boring and over-exacting to anyone who is entirely exempt from the gambling instinct; whilst he who has it must pay to this propensity the appropriate toll.” – John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes gets plenty of attention in the world of economics based on his macroeconomic theories, but many don’t realize that…
The Robo-Advisor Challenge
Robo-advisors make up a tiny fraction of the financial advisory business. Registered investment advisors oversee roughly $5 trillion in AUM, while robo-advisors currently have less than $15 billion in total. But because of their rapid growth in AUM over the past few years, robo-advisors are increasingly coming under scrutiny from traditional advisors.
The Difference Between Good & Bad Markets
Michael Batnick had a great post this past week about the “lost decade” for the S&P 500 in the 2000s (see What Lost Decade?). It’s a nice reminder of the benefits of global and style diversification in a portfolio after the a select group of stocks in the U.S. have performed so well over the…
My Favorite Non-Investing Books About Investing
A few people have asked me over the past couple of weeks to share some of my favorite books outside of finance that are applicable to investing. The majority of these books are based on psychology because it plays such an important role in making better investment decisions. Here’s my list: Mindless Eating: Why We…
Doing Nothing is a Decision
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal Last year, psychologists from the University of Virginia asked a number of subjects to sit in a room by themselves for a periods of 6 to 15 minutes at a time. They were asked to simply be…
Maybe You Shouldn’t Do That
Every week it seems like there’s a new story that captures everyone’s attention in the world of finance (the same thing happens with the regular news). People focus all of their attention on that one story or market and then quickly forget about it the next week when something new catches their eye.