The easy thing for an investment manager to do during a tough period is to over promise. The hard thing is to tell the truth. Cliff Asness does the latter in his recent piece, which is a must read for investors of all stripes. Is this a huge tactical distress / opportunity? Everyone wants me…

When Amazon filed for its IPO in 1997, it was valued at almost $300 million ($470 million in today’s dollars). Today, there are 95 private companies in the United States valued at more than $1 billion. Private companies are eschewing public markets for longer, and growing larger than they have ever before. In a related…

Articles Our beliefs can calcify and harden in the presence of contradictory information By Josh Brown You are 2.0 software running in 200,000 year old hardware By Scott Bell He is trained to offer a rebuttal to every objection. By Blair duQuesnay No client received the returns By Preston McSwain I’m not going to leave…

Michael Steinhardt once said, “Nothing gives a better feeling to a manager than making money for his or her investors when almost everyone else is losing.” I will never know what that will feel like, but I would imagine that similarly, nothing gives a worse feeling to a manager than losing money when almost everyone…

On this week’s Animal Spirits, we discuss Am I paying too little for stuff? The Athletic has $28 million in VC funding. College tours by private jet. Seriously. Coke is buying a coffee company for $5 billion.  This cannabis company seems fully valued Buffalo wing flavored Oreos Yes, markets are hot.  FIRE Ben’s take on…

It has been 2,555 days since gold peaked in September 2011. The S&P 500 meanwhile is within half a percent of its all-time high. Gold investors have good reason to be frustrated, as the precious metal currently sits 40% below those highs. Gold did fantastically well coming out of the GFC, but like most other…

A few years ago an acquaintance was telling me about a stock he bought. It went up quite a bit shortly after he bought it, but then he watched all his gains disappear and was now holding a loser. So he asked me, “How do you know when to sell a stock?” My answer, “you…

Articles We can only track the progress of equity markets in hindsight By David Schawel Of the nearly 2,000 active equity funds that began the 10-year period, only 300 proceeded to beat a comparable ETF after fees and taxes. That’s a 16% beat rate for the cheapest class of active stock funds. By Jeffrey Ptak…

When you think about the worst periods in stock market history, you think about the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and probably 1973-1974. What often gets overlooked is the bear market of 1969-1970. Over a 60-day period from March 3, 1970 through May 26, 1970, the S&P 500 finished higher only 16 times. This admittedly…

On this week’s Animal Spirits, we discuss: Chicago, this is a bad idea.  Monthly stipend of lump sum? Of course you’re going to say winning the lottery improved your quality of life Crypto horror stories Wells… …JP Morgan …and Boiler Rooms Free trading Trend following is having a hard time The best consumer environment ever…