Like everyone else, I’ve been reading (well, skimming) reams of year-end—and in some places, “decade-end”—economic summaries. There’s lots of talk about black swans, financial “Frankensteins,” lost decades, and fundamental changes in investor behavior.
Black swans are old news, and I’ve written on financial innovation and lost decades previously. And I’ve only got a tiny bit to say about investor behavior. I’ll get to that after sharing a few other observations I wish got more attention in all this year-in-reviewing.
Read more »
For 35 years I’ve carried a quotation in my wallet. More precisely, I’ve moved the quotation, clipped from a now-defunct newspaper, from wallet to wallet to wallet over the decades.
The quotation is from Willa Cather’s “O Pioneers”:
“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.”
Read more »
You were getting close to retirement, and you’d thought you’d saved enough.
And then the market tanked.
So, you decided to stick it out and try to regain what you’d lost. Other changes to your portfolio structure or your investing strategy could wait.
Read more »
Nearly 20 years ago, I helped a group of friends start an investment club.
We were regulars at a friendly poker game, so we named our venture the Busted Flush Investment Club. My hope was that I could interest these guys—they were all guys—in learning more about investing. The idea of investment clubs has been around for many decades, and some individual clubs have kept going for years.
Read more »
Steve Utkus, one of my fellow bloggers, wrote recently about the dubious value of a local radio station’s early-morning reports on where the S&P 500 and Nasdaq markets are likely to open the day, based on futures trading. He labeled it “junk news.”
Since this is a “summer of sequels” at the cinema, I’d like to add my own sequel to Steve’s blog post.
Read more »
