A few weeks back, a reader—let’s call him Karl—challenged me with a question. Why, he asked, do I not recommend momentum investment strategies? If you’re not familiar with the term, momentum strategies seek to buy stocks that have done well in the past, with the hope that they will continue rising, [...]
I'm sure I sound like a broken record when I say that the single most important part of an investment plan is asset allocation. While nothing in the world is guaranteed, you dramatically increase your chances for success when you have an effective mix of stocks, bonds, cash and maybe real [...]
Last year I wrote about Brook and Robin Lopez, twin brothers who both play in the NBA. In that case, I was drawing a parallel to investments that appear identical but have significant differences once you scratch the surface. In recent weeks, I've been getting a lot of questions about another set [...]
Recently, I came across an academic paper with an attention-grabbing title: “It has been very easy to beat the S&P 500.” Not just easy, but very easy. That got my attention because, in recent years, beating the S&P 500 has been anything but easy. In fact, it's been maddeningly difficult. [...]
In January of 1946, a man named Stanislaw Ulam found himself confined to a hospital bed, having suffered an encephalitis attack. A brilliant scientist and a veteran of the Manhattan Project, Ulam wasn't the type to sit idly while he recuperated. Instead, after playing innumerable games of solitaire [...]
