Articles Being smart or stupid didn't necessarily determine the outcome. It's just the way things worked out. By Josh Brown Bearing too little risk is precisely how investors end up failing slowly. By Corey Hoffstein Is the US stock market in another bubble? Yes. By Rob Arnott, Shane Shepherd, and Bradford Cornell All it takes…
Animal Spirits: The Collaborative Podcast
We talked about: Some annoying finance phrases What if Tesla were a private company? Netflix is beating all expectations… …But should it be worth more than Disney? The Amazon shareholder letter Chris Bosh knows nothing about money… …How Greenblatt would explain things Listen here: Charts mentioned Tweets mentioned Here's a fun game – Can you…
In 1966, Gemini XI traveled 853 miles above the earth's surface in the farthest space mission ever. Apollo 8 would shatter that record just two years later, taking Frank Borman, William Anders, and Jim Lovell to the moon, 240,000 miles away. The Saturn V had 5.6 million parts, carried a million gallons of propellant, and…
How can Netflix be worth nearly as much as Disney? Five years ago, Disney was worth nearly ten times as much as Netflix, and over this time, Disney's earnings have been 35 times larger than Netflix. Yet the gap in company size has all but disappeared. How is this possible? Over the last five years, Netflix…
Articles The most dominant creatures tend to be huge, but the most enduring tend to be smaller. By Morgan Housel We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future. By Nick Maggiulli Mr. Paulson has acknowledged making mistakes By Gregory Zuckerman The company needs to figure out how to…
Any Fool Can Be a Stock Market Genius
Last week Barry sat down for an amazing conversation with Joel Greenblatt, author of You Can Be a Stock Market Genius (originally titled Any Fool Can Be a Stock Market Genius). Greenblatt tells a story about when he went to a school in Harlem to talk with kids about investing. To explain how markets work and…
This Tells You Nothing
The average market strategist has a 2,943 year-end price target for the S&P 500. This is at the upper range of the typical 8 to 10% return that we expect strategists to expect every year. With an annual standard deviation of 20, an 8% average return means that stocks will return between -8% and +28%…
Evolving ETFs
A few weeks ago Tadas Viskanta asked a bunch of bloggers the following question: What ETF, if it were launched tomorrow, would you invest in with little (or no) hesitation? Said another way what asset class or strategy is not currently (effectively) available in an ETF wrapper? My answer: Nothing. I'm content. Little did I know that…
Animal Spirits: Some Things We Learned
Stories Discussed Asia is disrupting Silicon Valley This guy has a $76,000 pension. Per month. Germans save a lot of money. Ben says the 200-day is bullet proof. What if the future is better than we think? Everybody expects lower returns. Borrowers are pushed deeper into debt. But the next recession doesn't have to mirror…
At First Glance
Some things look really impressive at first glance. Walking on burning wood is a perfect example, which John Allen Paulos writes about Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences: The practice has often been cited as an example of "mind over matter" and you don't have to be innumerate to be impressed initially with such a feat….