-
Tools are important. The quality and shape of an instrument matters. Many skills are inextricably linked to particular tools. And yet the truth remains that you can lose sight of the skill through a compulsive focus on the tool. In the context of money there is a widely varied set of skills that it can
-
And nothing about your life changed. Your brother-in-law still has a scary surgery on Tuesday. Your kids are playing the piano badly in the hall. The front door still needs to be fixed. The emails keep coming. Markets are important because they enable regular people to benefit from the ownership of companies that, over time,
-
An important philosophical question to settle as an investor is: What is my edge here? Who is the edge against? How sustainable is the edge? For 99.99% of investors, the honest answer is, “I have none.” The honest answer is, I am on an NBA basketball court with nine 7-footers, and I can’t even see
-
A mathematical fact for investment funds of all sorts–private equity funds, hedge funds, venture capital, etc.–is that growth and outperformance do not go hand-in-hand and are often negatively correlated. The more money a fund manages, the harder it can be to find opportunities that will make a material impact on the overall fund’s performance, the
-
Stomach bugs will attack you out of nowhere. There’s nothing you can do to avoid them, and they are awful. But living your whole life in fear of the next stomach bug, or fixating on the last one, is no way to live at all. It’s the same with market drops of all sorts. They
-
I think one of the reasons retirement is so hard for many retirees is because we haven’t wrestled very well with this question. And to wrestle with the meaning of retirement is really to wrestle with the meaning of three other words: work, rest, and play. Our lives are made up of work, rest, and
-
Many things worth doing are hard, and everything you do should not kick you in the teeth. This is the basic tension you have to navigate in all areas of your life, including your finances. Bono describes his attempt to navigate this tension in his memoir. He and some of the other members of U2
-
Much attention is paid–and often rightfully so–to habits and processes as primary means of achieving some end. But while it’s true that we can sometimes force character change by our behavior–e.g., we can become generous by simply starting to give, or become savers by starting to save–it’s also true that at some point we have
-
Be the type of person who gives every month by automating a gift every month. Be the type of person who saves every month by automating contributions every month. Be the type of person who is transparent about money with their spouse by having a monthly chat that’s on the calendar every month. Intentions and
-
Every year when January rolls around, economists and market commentators all of one accord will blast out their grandest, vaguest, most hedged predictions for the coming year. They are almost always wrong, and when they are not wrong they are lucky. Not only is there no value in this exercise, there is negative value. Any
Meaningful Returns 