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…

“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…

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.

“Every investor has an alarm clock that goes off around the same time every day. The secret is to know when and to adjust yours accordingly.” – Bill Gross

I recently got my hands on some longer-term market performance data over 15 and 20 year time frames through year-end 2014. I love digging into this kind of long-term data and there were some numbers that immediately stood out to me. Here are those numbers with annual returns over a wide variety of markets and…

A few random observations on the investment process: 1. Good investment advice will always sound the best and make the most sense when looking back at the past or planning ahead for the future. It will rarely sound so great in the moment when you actually have to use it. 2. Depending on which side…