A reader asks: Now that factor funds keep getting launched, do you think that will ultimately spell doom for any potential future out-performance? This is a great question. Investing in factors, tilts, anomalies or whatever you want to call them is definitely becoming more mainstream because the academic research is now well-known. ETFs and mutual…

In a piece for Slate last week, Helaine Olen took the financial industry to task for their continued push to make financial literacy a priority. She pulled no punches:

“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…

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.

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…

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…

“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…

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.

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…

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…