One of the reasons it’s so difficult to outperform the market is because so many individual stocks themselves underperform the market. It’s not a symmetrical distribution where half the stocks outperform and half underperform. A few years ago Michael Cembalest at JP Morgan performed an extensive study on the Russell 3000 Index, which is a good…
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Why Are People Miserable at Work?
Small talk has never been my thing. When you meet someone new I’d estimate 90% of conversations begin with the following question: “So what do you do?” Very few people care about the answer but this has turned into a cultural norm in recent decades. Work is ingrained in our identities in many ways. Derek…
How to Wreck a Pension Plan in 3 Easy Steps
It’s hard to find many investment books since the turn of the century that don’t include the research paper from Roger Ibbotson and Paul Kaplan called Does Asset Allocation Explain 40, 90, or 100 Percent of Performance?1 The study was meant to decipher whether it was asset allocation or market timing and security selection that…
Simple vs. Complex, 2018 Edition
Jason Zweig recently chatted with the ever-candid Charlie Munger, who had this to say of value investors: The money managers among them are “like a bunch of cod fishermen after all the cod’s been overfished,” Mr. Munger tells me. “They don’t catch a lot of cod, but they keep on fishing in the same waters. That’s…
Martin Short’s Nine Categories for Self Evaluation
Martin Short has had a sneaky good career in Hollywood going on four decades or so. He was on Saturday Night Live for just one season in the mid-1980s but that led to movies like Three Amigos, Innerspace, Three Fugitives (underrated if memory serves), Father of the Bride, Captain Ron (loved this one) and many…
How To Stay in the Game
Everyone remembers game one of last year’s NBA Finals between Golden State and Cleveland as the JR Smith game. After rebounding a missed free throw with just under 5 seconds left Smith dribbled out the clock, not realizing the Cavs weren’t winning but rather tied with the Warriors. This picture of LeBron’s dismay with Smith…
How Hard is it to Become a 401(k) Millionaire?
The current retirement system leaves much to be desired. There are a decent number of people taking advantage of tax-deferred savings vehicles but it’s a fairly small number that ever reaches millionaire status in these accounts. In Fidelity’s defined contribution plan, there are roughly 157,000 people who have saved at least $1 million in their 401(k)….
What The 200 Day Moving Average Does & Does Not Tell You
Trend-following is a strategy that got a lot of attention following the financial crisis. It’s something my views have evolved on over the years. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about what the typical trend-following signals actually mean. There’s much more nuance involved than simply looking at the moving average of the price…
4 Good Charts From This Week
I do a lot of reading and research during the week which brings me into contact with lots of graphs, charts and tables. Here are four that stood out this week along with some comments. This chart from Goldman Sachs (h/t Sam Ro) shows how ownership of the U.S. stock market has evolved over the…
Bad Advice Can Be Expensive
The S&P 500 hasn’t had a negative return for nine years now. There’s been some volatility in 2018 but overall things have been going pretty well for a while now. When things are going well in the markets it can become easier for investors to focus on the minutiae. Instead of focusing on the big…
