People say it’s starting to look like a stock picker’s market. That’s because the performance of individual stocks and the performance of different sectors are diverging. Since President-elect Trump’s win in November, the disparity in returns among different sectors is the highest it’s been since 2009. In addition, correlations among individual stocks have been falling. […]
Julie Won
The Power of Alipay…
We know there just was an election that was kind of important, but last week there was another fascinating day of an entirely different nature: Singles Day on November 11. Singles Day is a made-up holiday in Asia that started as a way for young people to celebrate being single (since the date is written […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Modern Anxiety and Purpose
A friend of mine who is a nurse told me that on election night her hospital saw a surge in patients coming to the ER with chest pain. For some, the stress, suspense, and excitement or disappointment of election night became too much to handle. The last few months, there have been plenty of stories […]
The 2-Minute Thought: The Danes Are a Happy People
Source: Citi IO Earlier this year, Denmark once again was declared the world’s happiest country in the World Happiness Report Update 2016 released by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations. Although Denmark lost the number one spot once in 2015, it otherwise has been ranked the world’s happiest country three out of […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Are the Super-Rich Really Smarter Than Everyone Else?
**Please note: The 2-Minute Thought will be on holiday for two weeks and will return on November 10** You may say yes, of course the super-rich are smarter. Or you may say no way, they’re just luckier. Or you may say, wait a minute, it depends. And yes, it does depend . . . But […]
On Getting People To Say Yes…
Social psychologist Robert Cialdini is an expert on getting others to comply with our requests. How do we get people to buy from us, contribute to our charities, accept a work offer, or join our causes? Cialdini has studied hundreds if not thousands of salespeople, direct marketers, television advertisers, nonprofit fundraisers, public relations specialists, and […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Speaking a foreign language can make you more rational
Source: University of Toledo If you’re fortunate enough to speak more than one language, you have many advantages over those who speak just one. The pluses go beyond navigating another country with ease or having rich interactions with the people who live there. Various studies show that bilingual and multilingual people are more cognitively flexible […]
The 2-Minute Thought: For how long could you do nothing?
Investing is one domain where waiting quietly and doing nothing is often the best course. Why? Because most often the investment actions we take are mistakes. Behavioral psychologist Daniel Kahneman once cited a study showing that, “every action the individual investor takes has a negative expected return. On average, they lose, and the more ideas […]
The 2-Minute Thought: A Contrarian Signal for Oil and Gas?
Imagine this: You are at a stock investment conference where dozens of companies bring their leadership to tell their story to potential investors. You, the investor, get to choose from several companies presenting at the same time. In one room, there is a very popular company, and the room is overflowing with analysts and portfolio […]
The 2-Minute Thought: The State of the Workday Lunch
If you were asked what your lunch break at work is like, you may well answer, “What lunch break?” Forget about the multi-course restaurant meal from decades past. Forget about the lunch hour between 12 and 1 — something The Washington Post calls “a charming relic of the past, like phone cords and typewriters.” Today […]
What It Takes To Be A Great Investor…
Investing is complicated. If you are a fundamental investor who looks at companies, you need to understand the company’s financials, grasp the underlying business, delve into how the company spends money to make money, and assess how it differs from its competitors. That work alone is substantial and hard. But it is not enough for […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Like it today? Wait till tomorrow
We are unreliable inconsistent decision makers, according to an article from this month’s Harvard Business Review by Daniel Kahneman, Andrew M. Rosenfield, Linnea Gandhi, and Tom Blaser. We contradict the principles we believe in, we contradict our own prior judgments, and we often do so without realizing it. The authors note that when software developers […]
