“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…

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….

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…

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.

If you missed part I of my Q&A with Wes Gray of Alpha Architect, check it out here for thoughts on his firm’s new ETF, the process of starting an ETF and more on quantitative value investing. Part II includes some of Gray’s biggest influences on his investment philosophy and lessons learned from serving our…

Wes Gray and his asset management firm, Alpha Architect, recently launched their first ETF, called the ValueShares U.S. Quantitative Value ETF (ticker: QVAL). I had the chance to ask Wes some questions about a wide range of topics, including the fund’s strategy. My feeling is that ETFs are eventually going to take over the investment world, so…

“I never viewed money as being ‘my money.’ I always saw it as ‘the money’.  It’s a resource. If it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.” – Louis CK

It’s simple really. Just change the time horizon so it suits your stance.

“International diversification might not protect you from terrible days, months, or even years, but over longer horizons (which should be more important to investors) where underlying economic growth matters more to returns than short-lived panics, it protects you quite well.” – Cliff Asness

I’m doing some research for a side project and came across an absolute gem from Jason Zweig that appeared in John Bogle’s book Common Sense on Mutual Funds. Here’s Zweig’s take on the difference between a marketing firm and an investment firm from an industry conference in 1997: Today, the question that you must decide…