Last week I was talking with a friend and the topic of retirement planning came up (my conversations are so hip these days). He told me he was overwhelmed by the sheer number of variables that come into play when trying to plan for something that is decades out into the future. The entire process…

Dr. Atul Gawande recently shared a story in The New Yorker about a man named Bill who started to experience severe migraines at age 19. The headaches eventually became almost a daily occurrence that would cause extreme pain, make him throw up and generally make life so miserable that he had to quit his job…

“The essence of risk management lies in maximizing the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimizing the areas where we have absolutely no control over the outcome and the linkage between effect and cause is hidden from us.” – Peter Bernstein When you spend enough time in the finance industry you’re…

These were my favorite books I read in 2016: NON-FICTION Smarter, Faster, Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business Duhigg discusses the science behind motivation and the systems that can actually help people change their behavior which goes far beyond the typical lifehacks and shortcuts. He shows why motivation is a skill…

“The best diet is the one you don’t know you’re on.” – Brian Wansink Of all the analogies that get thrown around on a regular basis about investing and finance — sports, gambling, Seinfeld, piloting a plane, movies, etc. — by far the most accurate for my money is dieting and weight loss. The equations…

Predicting crashes, recessions, black swans and such has become fetishized by many in the investment world since the Great Financial Crisis. Those who predicted trouble prior to 2008 have had a hard time letting go of that one right call and plenty of those who missed it have been trying to make up for lost…

At our conference last week I moderated a panel on the topic of organizational alpha. This is the idea that adding value to an investment portfolio goes far beyond trying to outperform the market. Traditional alpha is a finite resource and can be fleeting. Organizational alpha is something that every individual or firm can adopt to…

Financial advisor Ric Edelman gave Howard Gold at MarketWatch some pretty sobering thoughts on the bond market this past week: “The typical investor today has never experienced a sustained rising-rate environment and they are emotionally and historically unprepared for what happens when interest rates go up 3% or 5%,” he said in a telephone interview…

We had our first ever Evidence-Based Investing Conference with IMN in New York City yesterday. It was a packed house, we had an unbelievable line-up of speakers and it looked like everyone had a good time. Josh provided a nice recap of the event this morning so no need for me to go into detail on…

“Soros is the best loss taker I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t care whether he wins or loses on a trade. If a trade doesn’t work, he’s confident enough about his ability to win on other trades that he can easily walk away from the position. There are a lot of shoes on the shelf; wear…