“I don’t think that many investors have learned that the more you press, the more problems you get into.” – Peter Bernstein By far the best thing I read this week was an article by Jason Zweig. It had nothing to do with current events or risks in the markets. In fact, it was published…
A Risk to Consider For Small Cap Stocks
“Risk means more things can happen than will happen.” – Elroy Dimson
How Investment Performance Affects Savings Rates
“There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” – Harry Truman The 1980s and 1990s was a period of unprecedented financial market performance. These are the annual 220-year return numbers for simple total stock and total bond portfolio invested in the U.S. markets: These return numbers are absolutely mind-blowing…
Benjamin Graham: Father of the Efficient Market Hypothesis?
“Warren [Buffett], don’t worry too much about making money. It won’t change the way you live. It’ll change the way your wife lives.” – Benjamin Graham The first investment book I ever read was The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. Graham’s analogy about Mr. Market that he used to describe the stock market is still…
Delivering Alpha & Accepting Beta
“You have to bring a total commitment to the business or you don’t belong. Premium fees demand premium performance.” – Leon Cooperman
Retirement Concerns
“The real purpose of saving is to empower you to keep your priorities – not to make you sacrifice.” – Charley Ellis BlackRock recently released the results from a survey asking investors about their five biggest retirement concerns. Here they are in order: 1. How do I start saving for retirement? 2. Am I investing…
“Are you bullish or bearish?”
“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.” – Charles Kettering Are you bullish or bearish on the market? I get this question a lot. Obviously I have my feelings on the attractiveness of the different stock markets. But in the grand scheme of things,…
Stock Corrections After Long Winning Streaks
“If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.” – John Bogle
The Equal-Weighted Sector S&P 500
“The nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you’ll think it does. To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” – Charlie Munger A few months ago I wrote a post about the S&P 500 sector quilt which…
Investing, Basically
“Perceptions of future stress are felt now.” – Richard Peterson From Richard Peterson’s Inside The Investor’s Brain: Researchers examined the stress responses of two groups of rats after they were subjected to painful electric shocks. Group 1 received painful electric shocks 10 times per hour, while group 2 was shocked 50 times per hour. The…