2020 offered two particularly abject lessons on why “Let’s wait and see.” is almost always a terrible strategy. COVID. The presidential election. “Let’s wait and see.” can take many forms. “I just want to get out because of the uncertainty of (insert scary event). Once things calm down and return to normal, we’ll get back in.” Statements like this typically follow a period of market decline or when there is… Read More
Nobody Saw This Coming, Part Two
Last year around this time, I wrote a post titled, Nobody Saw This Coming about the performance of the markets in 2019 when it surprised everyone. Then 2020 came along and said, “Hold my beer.” Nobody saw the global pandemic coming. Nobody could have presumed global shutdowns. Nobody saw a 34% decline over 33 days. In part, because that combination of things had never happened during the life of anyone… Read More
The Ultimate Retirement Lever
There are plenty of technical planning topics that can add value to your financial life that range from tax optimization to long-term care planning to estate planning. But if you blow up your portfolio, each one of those planning areas is exponentially worse off which is why I write so much about the simple value of staying the course through all markets. Imagine that around March 23rd of this year,… Read More
Who Would’ve Thought?
On 24 November, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed above 30,000 for the first time ever. In case you’ve forgotten, on March 23rd, the DJIA closed at 18,214. This is a rebound of about 65% in a period of about eight months’ time. Let’s also not forget how loud the doomsayers had become in their war chant of “this is the end of the world as we know it.”… Read More
Today’s Headlines Are Tomorrow’s Footnotes
I have been reading a collection of investment articles that were written back in the early 1990s. Here’s the gist of those articles. The bull market had gone on for about 10+ years to that point. The markets were coming off of a five-year span of ‘unprecedented volatility’ as was noted a few times. There were negative reports everywhere about the economy and how things were stalling out. People eagerly… Read More
Are You Worrying About the Right Thing?
The most frequently asked question right now is how the presidential election is going to impact the stock market. What is really being asked is, “Should I sell out now and get back in later?” Who knows what is going to happen in the market… Here’s what we do know. While everyone continues to ask the question about how overvalued the market is and how volatile it might be over… Read More
The Enduring Reason for Optimism
I received some feedback from my post last week, Pessimism Abounds, regarding whether or not I am just wearing rose-colored glasses given the state of the world. It’s hard to argue with the state of the world argument in any kind of an immediate time frame. As I was receiving this feedback, I received the following quote from Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic email, which I highly recommend by the way…. Read More
Pessimism Abounds
With the hyper-partisan election in front of us and the COVID-inspired economic drawdown in our rearview, I find myself returning over and over again to the same question: “Is it possible that we are both too pessimistic in the short-term and too pessimistic about the long-term prospects of the market?” I’m not saying that we are, I’m just asking the question of whether it’s possible? Since 2008, I can think… Read More
Should You Overweight Tech in Your Portfolio?
A couple of weeks ago, Apple “lost” $179 Billion in market cap in a single day. It has gone on to lose over $500 billion in market cap over the past few weeks. As I write this, Apple is valued at about $1.9 Trillion. I have heard people asking the question, “Should I just own tech since that is so obviously the future?” At the very least, more people are… Read More
How I Invest My Money
*There is a book being released on November 17, 2020 that I believe will be one of the best finance books of the year. The book is titled: “How I Invest My Money: Finance Experts Reveal How They Save, Spend and Invest.” It was brilliantly put together by Joshua Brown and Brian Portnoy and each contribution includes a beautiful illustration from Carl Richards. I am thankful I was asked to… Read More
