March 2018

Belief and Doubt

The psychologist Dan Gilbert once said “Findings from a multitude of research literatures converge on a single point: People are credulous creatures who find it very easy to believe and very difficult to doubt.” I’m guilty of this. I’m much more inclined to see something and say, “Huh, that’s interesting” rather than “this is total…

A Little Light

I’m lucky that I get to work with such incredible people. Dina and Tony Isola are as good as it gets. Tony wrote a beautiful piece yesterday called Ring Life’s Bell. In it he said: “Overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles are what defines us.” The Isola’s obstacle came when their fourth grade child, Joe, was diagnosed with stage…

The Beginning of the End?

Over the last nine years, the NASDAQ 100 gained 55%, 20%, 3%, 18%, 37%, 19%, 9%, 7%, 32%. These numbers are insane. But the past is the past and today’s question is whether the recent selling is the beginning of the end, or just another shakeout? The chart below shows that all of the FAANG…

Animal Spirits: Horizontal Support

On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben we discuss: Jim Carrey nailed it Two centuries of momentum Do most people need life insurance? To find the right advisor, do a beauty contest. Whitney Tilson opens up If buybacks are bad… Buybacks demystified Listen here: Tweet of the Week Unreal: the Fidelity Contrafund has…

Sometimes This Sucks

Buy and hold isn’t a perfect strategy. If you convinced somebody in the fall of 2007 that this was the right way to invest, they’d have a bone to pick with you, as they’d watch U.S. stocks crash by nearly 60% over the following sixteen months. But if this person were able to hold on,…

No Nothing

Over the weekend a friend sent me his 401(k) options to review. I wouldn’t wish this lineup on my worst enemy. All of the choices come from one fund family. There are no index funds. The target-date funds are 79 basis points.The only thing that is listed is a one or two-sentence description, accompanied by…

These Are the Goods

Articles Anecdotes are nice and interesting to examine, but what about the average firm? By Jack Vogel How is it possible that on average the strategy is a winner if each and every path is expected to decay over time? By Corey Hoffstein Selling is as unnatural to me as writing with my less dominant hand. By…

Ugly

An ugly day to wrap up an ugly week. The S&P 500 fell 5.9% over the past five days, its worst week since January 2016. Switching to the people’s index, the Dow just closed at its lowest levels since November 24, 82 days ago. The last time the Dow experienced a close at an 82-day…

A Not So Pretty Picture

This is not a pretty picture. If this bleak projection were to come to fruition, a 60/40* portfolio  would shrink $100 into $77 on a real basis over the next seven years. As shown in the chart below, the -23% return that GMO is forecasting for a 60/40** portfolio is a rare occurrence, happening just 1.2%…

Animal Spirits: The Magic Number

On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben we discuss: Investors bought the dip The business of business TV How much money do you need to retire? Be careful with surveys How Amazon became corporate America’s nightmare And more Amazon The DOL rule- nobody buys 5 ETFs in a brokerage account People will never…