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…
The Easy Pickings
The Great Northern Expedition was one of the largest exploration endeavors in human history. The grueling state sponsored trip, which lasted ten long years (1733-1743) and covered thousands of miles, cost one-sixth the annual income of Russia. During this campaign, the St.Peter, led by Danish cartographer Vitus Bering, was shipwrecked on what would later be…
These Are the Goods
Articles Luck is the flip side of risk By Morgan Housel The iron law of Blumhouse By Nick Maggiulli Ramsey is the pro bono financial adviser to millions of Americans who otherwise could never afford one. By Tim Alberta Making it look easy requires plenty of hard work. By Ben Carlson Not only are the sources of…
Animal Spirits: Goodnight Moon
On this week’s Animal Spirits with Michael & Ben we discuss: The Flash Correction U.S. Household net worth hits record highs I knew Dave Ramsey was big, but not this big Rising rates are a double-edged sword The bond bull market resulted mostly from high starting rates, not falling rates. Not everything should be indexed…
The Flash Correction
31 days ago the market peaked. In nine sessions the NASDAQ 100 fell 10%. And then in the next 21, it got it all back and then some, gaining 13% over that time. This has been a wild few weeks for stocks, but it is not unprecedented. This type of move has happened before, as…
The Race to A Trillion
In the last 92 trading sessions, Amazon has added $304,512,850,704 to its market capitalization. Not that $300 billion in 92 days needs context, but here’s some anyway: This is more than Amazon was worth in April 2016, not even two years ago. This is bigger than every company in the S&P 500 with the exception of…
These Are the Goods
Articles Coming up with explanations for past successes is easy but figuring out who the winners will be going forward never is. By Ben Carlson Sometimes not acting can be worse than taking a big risk By Nick Maggiulli Shifting the investment program from benchmark-based to goal-based allows every institution an opportunity to succeed…
