Esquire is the only print magazine I still subscribe to. They always seem to have a good cover story, usually an interview with a big movie star. I base my reaction about the movie star on one question: Would I want to have a beer with this person? In the most recent interview from the…
How the U.S. Dollar Affects Your Portfolio
A funny thing happened as the end-of-the-world crowd was busy predicting a collapse of the U.S. dollar caused by the Fed’s monetary policies – the dollar has rallied mightily. Karen Damato at The Wall Street Journal ran a very telling chart this week that shows the effect the dollar’s rise has had on foreign stock…
How Sector Rotation Wreaks Havoc on Investors
Charlie Bilello from Pension Partners posted a great chart in a recent post:
What Caused the Great Depresssion?
The price of oil is down nearly 40% in five months, a swift fall in one of the most important and visible commodities in the world. After seeing such a crash in price, investors and pundits are quick to trot out the specific reasons for the decline. I’ve heard many people this week give the…
Not All Active Funds Consistently Underperform
There was a mind-blowing stat flying around last week that showed less than 10% of all U.S. stock funds are currently beating the S&P 500 in 2014. Over longer time frames, the fact that most index funds beat the majority of actively managed funds is a given at this point, but indexing always looks even better…
Should Millennials Pay Off Student Loans or Save For Retirement?
Noah Smith wrote a column for Bloomberg View last week that discussed the different options that Millennials have for their investing purposes. He laid out the two most frequently cited choices:
Portfolio Management & Decision Fatigue
“Finance is not about beating the market, necessarily. It’s about managing risks in such a way that we can be a productive society and we can achieve our goals.” – Robert Shiller In his latest Master’s in Business podcast for Bloomberg Radio, Barry Ritholtz asked Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller about how he manages his…
From Black Magic, Sorcery and Monsters to Finance 3.0
The following comes from Robert Hagstrom’s highly underrated book, Investing: The Last Liberal Art. Hagstrom is discussing author Michael Shermer’s book How We Believe: Shermer suggests that we can better appreciate the role of the belief system when we think back to the Middle Ages. During this period, 90 percent of the population was illiterate….
7 Simple Things Most Investors Don’t Do
Tadas Viskanta from Abnormal Returns made a great point in a recent post: In the financial blogosphere and financial media we are often confronted with debates about issues that really are important only the margin. Of late discussions about active vs. passive, smart beta vs. dumb beta and alternative assets have been at the front…
The Great Volatility Unwind
One of the reasons the past couple of years have frustrated so many professional investors is because of the lack of volatility. For most investors, volatility is a four letter word that should be avoided at all costs. But for others, volatility acts as a form of opportunity.
