“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,…

Some simple reminders about what to focus on: Portfolio management not investment strategies. Meeting your needs & desires not beating benchmarks. Risk management not risk measurement. Long-term process not short-term outcomes. Products you understand not investments that sound clever. Important not urgent. Simplicity not complexity. Think opportunities not volatility. Fewer decisions not more choices. Enough…

“Being passive doesn’t mean doing nothing.” – Larry Swedroe One of the first decisions you need to make in the process of building an investment portfolio is whether you will be an active or a passive investor.  Most investors assume this means making the choice between index funds and active management, but that’s too much…

“The one rule I have is I give very general instructions to my financial advisor, and then I don’t monitor it. I think that’s good, both because it causes more anguish than pleasure, on average, and because you’re tempted to make stupid decisions if you monitor things too closely.” – Daniel Kahneman As Daniel Kahneman…

“Believe there are bubbles, but don’t go around looking for them and betting the ranch on them.” – Cliff Asness Jeremy Grantham is a legend among investing circles. His quarterly letters are on my must-read list. I’ve seen him speak before and he has the uncanny ability to make complex investing topics easy to understand, which I…

“Rule number one: most things will prove to be cyclical. Rule number two: some of the greatest opportunities for gain and loss come when people forget rule number one.” – Howard Mark Here’s a breakdown of the S&P 500 sector ETFs ranked from best to worst performance by year over the past decade along with…

“Avoid the twin impostors of short term out- and under-performance. It is important for us to remember what really matters is the long-term.” – Howard Marks At what point in the past are you judging your stock performance? The first few weeks of April? Didn’t look so great. The last year? Much better. 2008? Not…

“When clients pay attention to noise, we call it dumb. When advisors do it, we call it research.” – Carl Richards Business Insider ran the following graph with data from a recent Oxford University study on the jobs that are most at risk of being replaced by robots in the future: I’ve highlighted 8th occupation…

“Sixty/40 is anchored in a really important existential point—the benefit of diversification.  So, to say that 60/40 is dead is basically to say that diversification is dead—at least as far as it goes between stocks and bonds.” – Nicholas Colas The 60/40 stock/bond portfolio is often used as a simple benchmark for a balanced asset allocation….

“Successful investing can almost be easy: Avoid harmful “accidents” and do what will achieve your own most important long-term objectives. The very human irony is that learning this lesson can take so many years that by the time we “get it,” it may be too late to use the lesson because the powers of compounding…