“A bull market is like sex. It feels best just before it ends.” – Barton Biggs Here’s how legendary investor John Templeton once described bull markets: Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria. And this is how Howard Marks defines the three stages of a bull…

“A personal finance crisis is almost inevitable unless you address the truly important tasks in your life before they become urgent.” – Carl Richards Here’s another one to add to the ever-growing list of scary household saving stats courtesy of Businessweek: Just 45 percent of upper-middle-class households (income from $75,000 to $99,999) saved anything in…

“One lesson from 2008 is that if it’s very complicated and you don’t understand it, maybe you shouldn’t buy it.” – Harry Markowitz It appears some people didn’t learn their lesson from the CDO debacle of the last financial crisis. This comes from a story in last week’s Wall Street Journal on a new fixed…

“If you think the market’s “too high” wait ’til you see it 20 years from now.” – Nick Murray

Interest rate risk has been THE big worry for bond investors for a number of years now.  It seems that everyone has been predicting a rise in interest rates, but it just hasn’t happened quite yet. This has caused many investors to shift their bond allocation in anticipation of a rate increase and price losses in…

One of the most difficult challenges of transitioning to retirement from the working world is a complete change in mindset with regards to an investment portfolio. You go from being a saver to a spender. There’s no future income or nearly as much time to soften the blow from bear markets. Growth is still necessary but you…

“There are few corners of the investment business where reversion to the mean does not hold sway.” – Michael Mauboussin

Before 1990, there wasn’t an easy way for investors to put money to work in a diversified basket of commodities. Unless you had your own seat on the futures exchange a la Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy in Trading Places or hired a broker who did, it would have been nearly impossible to include commodities…

“Successful investing is anticipating the anticipation of others.” – John Manard Keynes

“Beware of geeks bearing formulas.” – Warren Buffett Research Affiliates puts out some of the most interesting and thought-provoking research in the investment industry. Founder Rob Arnott’s work on fundamental indexing is especially innovative. The firm’s latest piece looks at smart beta and a host of factor investing data. One factor they looked into was the…