Buy and Hold
John Rekenthaler at Morningstar launched into a spirited defense of buy and hold investing over the weekend. His argument is essentially that since markets have bounced back since 2009, buy and hold...
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Underperformance
Whether you are an investment manager or a client, underperformance is a fact of life, no matter what strategy or methodology you subscribe to. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this chart from...
View ArticleDumb Talk About Smart Beta?
John Rekenthaler at Morningstar, who usually has some pretty smart stuff to say, took on the topic of smart beta in a recent article. Specifically, he examined a variety of smart beta factors with an...
View ArticleRats, Humans, and Probability
Investors—or people generally—find it difficult to think in terms of probability. A quote from a recent ThinkAdvisor article on probability is instructive: In multiple studies (most prominently those...
View ArticleThe Top Ten Ways to Sabotage Your Portfolio
Good portfolio management is difficult, while poor portfolio management is almost effortless! In the spirit of David Letterman’s Top Ten list, here is my contribution to the genre of things to avoid,...
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Stock Market at All-Time Highs
“I can’t buy now—the stock market is at all-time highs.” I’ve heard that, or some version of it, from multiple clients in the last few weeks. I understand where clients are coming from. Their past...
View ArticleThe 1%
“The 1%” phrase has been used a lot to decry income inequality, but I’m using it here in an entirely different context. I’m thinking about the 1% in relation to a recent article by Motley Fool’s...
View ArticleThe Growing Case Against ETFs
That’s the title of a Marketwatch article by mutual fund columnist Chuck Jaffe. I have to admit that usually I like his columns. But columns like this make me nuts! (See also The $ Value of Patience...
View ArticleHow Not to be a Terrible Investor
Morgan Housel at Motley Fool has a wonderful article on how investors can learn from failure. He sets the tone with a few different quotes and anecdotes that point out that a lot of being a success is...
View ArticleThe Coming Mega-Bull Market?
Investor behavior has a lot to do with how markets behave, and with how investors perform. To profit from a long mega-bull market, investors have to be willing to buy stocks and hold them through the...
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