There was some great reads out there today, here were my favorites. Not many people are worthy of “classic” in front of their name, but this is classic Housel (@tmfhousel) Pandering to the lowest common economic denominators (@ateachmoment) James Osborne on the trends in mutual funds and ETFs (@basonasset) What a time to be a…

“It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time.” -Yuval Noah Harari Imagine watching The Sixth Sense for the first time. Only you start at the final scene, and then continue on to the beginning. This is sort of what it’s like reading and…

“How could economics not be behavioral? If it isn’t behavioral, what the hell is it?”- Charlie Munger Investors don’t make decisions according to what textbooks would predict. They don’t plot efficient frontiers. They do play with “house money.” They are risk seeking when presented with a possible loss, but are risk averse when presented with…

“I’ve been there for all the golden years and I can tell you they weren’t golden at the time” – Lorne Michaels This was Lorne Michael’s response to Marc Maron when asked about the golden years of Saturday Night Live. How is it possible that he missed this with legends like Bill Murray, Chevy Chase,…

On this week’s Masters in Business, Barry sits down with Burton Malkiel, a living legend. At one point, Barry asks,  “If I see a train coming down the tracks, don’t I want to jump out of the way?” Here is his response: “Absolutely you want to jump out of the way. The problem is it…

“The hardest thing you’re ever going to do in your life is fail at something and if you don’t start failing at things you will not live a full life.”- Sebastian Junger I’ve experienced a lot of failure in my life. Like a lot of kids, I didn’t give a shit about school when I…

Most people know John Maynard Keynes as an economist. Few realize that he was also a tremendous investor. After his macro bets failed to cushion the blow in the Great Depression, he turned to stock picking. His results were phenomenal not only for his personal account, but for the Cambridge endowment fund as well as…

I’m not a huge fan of this quote from Paul Tudor Jones. Some of the best investors of all time have made a fortune adding to temporarily losing positions. And while this is true, it is equally true that the worst investments and the worst investors have added to losing positions, not knowing when to…

The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession by Peter Bernstein is not a book about why you should or should not invest in gold. Rather, it is an amazing story that takes the reader through the world’s monetary history.  With that said, I am pulling out some interesting nuggets (pun intended) where he did talk…

I analyzed the birth dates of the most important investors of all time. Ten observations were made. This is an incomplete list. It does not include any early financiers like J.P. Morgan, no chief strategists like Abby Joseph Cohen, and no Fed Chairman like Alan Greenspan. What it does include are traders, investors, hedge fund…