Category: Investing
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Diagnostic inflation
An increase in the diagnosis of a particular problem is not the same thing as an increase in the actual incidence of that problem, but that’s hard to come to terms with in real time. A related truth is that, as my physical therapist says, just the act of getting…
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New market highs
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…
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What’s your edge?
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,…
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Stomach bugs and markets
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…
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Don’t be a mark
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,…
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Investing rambles
Invest for a reason. Make it a good one. Invest for a long time. A long time is much longer than one year. It’s probably 20 years at least. Don’t invest in what you know because what you “know” is mostly an illusion in the face of an uncertain future.…
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Giving Tuesday
It’s Giving Tuesday. To quote Kevin Kelly: “When you give away 10% of your income, you lose 10% of your purchasing power, which is minor compared to the 110% increase in happiness you will gain.” A few notes about giving: Giving won’t erase your debt, and it won’t magically lead…
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Cash has a place
Sometimes the roof and the HVAC go out at the same time. Sometimes the market goes down at the exact moment you retire. Sometimes an incredible opportunity presents itself. Sometimes your parents might need your help, or a neighbor, or a single mom at your kid’s school. So, all the…
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Fed questions
How long will the Fed keep rates where they are? Is there another rate hike coming, or will rates start to come down again? In the meantime what’s in store for my portfolio? The answer or course—to these and many other important questions—is “No one knows.” That doesn’t mean we…
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Giving is its own gift
The legendary philanthropist Charles Feeney died yesterday at the age of 92. He’s legendary because of an accident, really, as he went out of his way to give an entire billions-of-dollars fortune away, in his lifetime, anonymously. And what’s more, the anonymity was more important to him than the tax…
Meaningful Returns 