“Think like an investor and not like an economist or politician.” – Richard Bernstein According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), since 1857, the U.S. has experienced 33 recessions that lasted an average of 17 months. That means that there’s been a recession in one out of every five years, on average. In…

“Hire an advisor because it is very hard to see the errors in your own behavior & it is easy to see the errors in someone else’s behavior.  Very few people need to hire advisors because of the size of their calculators.  They need an advisor to help them behave correctly.” – Carl Richards

“Nothing obscures your financial judgment on investments more than the site of your neighbor getting rich.” – JP Morgan A research study posed the following question: which new employee would be happier, the person making $36,000 in a firm where the starting salary is $40,000 or the one making $34,000 where the average is $30,000?…

“The good news is that in reality, risk and diversification are about what happens over the long haul, not during a punishing downturn like 2007-2009.” – William Bernstein In Skating Where the Puck Was, William Bernstein tackles one of the central tenets of any comprehensive investment plan — diversification. Specifically, Bernstein discusses correlation among the…

“The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.” – J.K. Galbraith Earlier this week I set out to define ‘This time is different.’ It’s a tough one to explain considering markets are always different because they’re complex, adaptive systems. But it’s never…

“The average long-term experience in investing is never surprising, but the short-term experience is always surprising.” – Charles Ellis

“This year I invested in pumpkins. They’ve been going up the whole month of October and I got a feeling they’re going to peak right around January. Then bang! That’s when I’ll cash in.” – Homer Simpson

“The most important thing you can have is a good strategic asset allocation mix. So, what the investor needs to do is have a balanced, structured portfolio – a portfolio that does well in different environments….we don’t know that we’re going to win. We have to have diversified bets.” – Ray Dalio This is one of…

Yesterday I posted my investment lessons in the 2013 Year in Review (Part 1). Part 2 is some other odds and ends from the year that was. Enjoy.

“Simplifying is generally the strategy of people who view the world in terms of systems.” – Scott Adams Every year people make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, save more, spend less or better their career prospects. According to Forbes, about 8% of these people actually achieve these resolutions. Tracking the drop off in traffic…