The Most Important Investment Decision You’ll Ever Make
When most people think about investing, they’re thinking about stuff that doesn’t really matter. They’re caught up in the minutiae: What fund should I own? How fast did the iPhone 7 sell out (and are people really going to be okay with no headphone jack)? What sector is going to take off this fall? But that’s not really what determines your portfolio’s fate. What really matters is your ratio between stocks and bonds.
What Can We Learn from the Market Disasters of the 1970s?
Throughout history, when bad news and events touched the daily lives of investors and caused nest eggs to shrink, it’s been natural to ask, “Is this the end of investing as we know it? Have new developments changed things so much that the old patterns no longer apply?” These four stories should help illustrate an […]
How Should an Overvalued Market Affect Your Investment Plan?
Markets don’t move capriciously. They move because something new has happened – new information has arisen. The tricky part is that we don’t know what new information will arise.
What Happens After the Market Drops?
Staying disciplined and avoiding market timing are two of the best investing tips we could give whether the market is up or down, but what happens after the market drops?
Disciplined Investors Don’t Rely on Market Predictions
Authors Note: This article was originally published towards the end of January 2016. To put it mildly, the year got off to a rocky start, and a lot of people were incredibly nervous about what this meant for the markets. While this article specifically addressed the situation at the beginning of 2016, but with a […]
Can You Time the Market?
Over the long term, market returns need to be captured efficiently and consistently. Trying to guess when they occur is an impossibility that leads to the underperformance stated above. How difficult is it to time the market? Let’s look.
Prophets & Losses: Predicting the Market is a Losing Proposition
WHAT IS OCCAM’S RAZOR? Occam’s Razor is a principle attributed to William Occam, a 14th century philosopher. He stressed that explanations must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. Thus, Occam’s Razor is a term used to “shave off” or dismiss superfluous explanations for a given event. This concept is largely ignored within the investment […]
Losing the Forest for the Trees: The Dangers of Comparative Investing
Some investors measure financial success by comparing their returns against popular benchmarks like the S&P 500 Index. It can be comforting to know how your investments compare to others … but there’s a catch. If you aren’t comparing your investments to similar investments, the results can misinform rather than enlighten your decision-making. This will knock […]
Black Monday Is Not a Black Swan
Last Monday, the S&P 500 dropped by more than 3.5%. This is a big drop, and has a lot of folks wondering if they should be invested in the market at all. It’s easy to get wrapped up in media coverage, and not keep last Monday in perspective. It was a bad day, but historically, […]
Is a High CAPE Cause for Alarm? Part 2: Valuation-Based Asset Allocation
Discussion around PE10 focuses primarily on how to adjust expectations about future stock market returns based on its value. A more controversial topic is whether it is beneficial to adjust strategic asset allocation in response to where PE10 is currently situated.
