I remember when The White Stripes burst onto the scene from Detroit in the early-2000s. Their sound was unique. Their look was unique. And no one could figure out what the relationship was between Jack and Meg White. Are they brother and sister? Are they married? Maybe they’re cousins? This was the early days of…

After writing about some of the reasons for the potential retirement crisis a few weeks ago I gave the standard prescription for the solution for most retirees — a combination of working longer, living on less, and reducing expectations for their retirement dreams. Then I received an email from two of my retired readers, Edd…

I had a great conversation on Friday afternoon with Jeremy Schwartz on his Sirius XM show, Behind the Markets. Nir Kaissar was also on the show so we had a nice back and forth on institutional asset management. Jeremy asked me why the institutional investment industry tends to lean towards complexity when building portfolios or offering…

Tim Ferriss had a wide-ranging interview on a recent podcast with Ezra Klein. They touched on a few subjects where Ferriss was quick to point out he didn’t have all the answers. I liked how he framed the idea of our overconfident nature: Humans are, and history certainly proves this out over and over and over…

In the summer of 2007, the markets experienced a huge dislocation that was something of a precursor to the financial crisis. Many of the largest, well-known quant hedge funds all started blowing up at the same time. Everything they were buying was going down while everything they were shorting was going up, causing massive losses…

“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…

Personal finance experts are constantly trying to get people to cut back and spend less. If only everyone would pack a brown bag for lunch and cut out the lattes every day there would be no retirement crisis, they tell us. While I think that lifestyle inflation is an issue for many people when trying…

There is a new Robert Cialdini book out this week — Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade. I have it on my Kindle but have just started reading it. I’m sure I’ll have more to say when I finish it in the coming weeks. The reason I’m so excited about this new effort…

There are a lot of brilliant investors out there, but very few brilliant investors who are also brilliant communicators. It’s rare to find someone in the investment industry who has the ability to explain complex topics about the markets and investing in a way that a wide audience can understand. That’s why investors are constantly quoting…

There was a crazy story on Bloomberg this morning about an obscure hedge fund that is supposedly putting up some of the best performance numbers in the industry. I say supposedly because the numbers almost have to be false. You couldn’t read this story and come up with any other takeaway. In many ways, the…