“The three stages of a bull market”: the first stage, when only a few unusually perceptive people believe things will get better, the second stage, when most investors realize that improvement is actually taking place, and the third stage, when everyone concludes things will get better forever.” – Howard Marks, Mastering the Market Cycle The […]
We all feel caught off guard. The financial professional, the Do-It-Yourself investor, and the 401(k) participant three years from retiring. You might feel like only a few weeks ago you “coulda, woulda, shoulda” done something different with your investments. There is never enough safety when fear takes hold. If we had 10% in stocks a […]
We are at the start of a new decade, which means lists and reviews of the past year and ten years. Along with these retrospectives, we are treated to a healthy dose of predictions for what is to come (too often by financial gurus, unfortunately). This is click bait, though. An invitation to bog ourselves […]
We all have hobbies that are self-taught. Maybe for you it is cooking, or gardening, or carpentry. They are the skills we picked up by following our passions, maybe with some mentorship, but rarely with formal education. For me, guitar and golf are my self-taught hobbies; learned the hard way since my teenage years. Most […]
Yesterday the USWNT advanced to the finals of the World Cup after the heroics of Goalie Alyssa Naeher in saving a penalty kick late in the match against England. Imagine being inside the head of a goalkeeper facing a penalty kick. Your job is to be the last one, standing alone, against an uncontested opponent. […]
There are two ways to measure how well you are doing in your investment account: In percentages or in dollars. Which feels worse: “I am down 5%” or “I am down $50,000”? For a $1,000,000 portfolio those are one and the same, but it is much more frequent that I hear down moves described in […]
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. Sometimes the stock market has been referred to as a “casino”. As investors, then, who better to learn from than a champion poker player like Ms. Duke? Truthfully she has written a very well-researched book on the role of skill and chance in determining any outcome. A career at […]
Last month, Bloomberg featured a research report on why Hedge funds continue to attract investors despite lackluster performance (https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-26/is-hedge-fund-love-in-our-dna). Because of their complexity and secrecy, Hedge Funds have an attraction that appeals to our illusion of control. We don’t want to believe that