Once we get used to things going a certain way, we tend to think they’ll just keep going. And the longer they keep going, the easier it is to get complacent and the harder it is to prepare for things going differently. But in life and in investment — as experienced investors well know — […]
Julie Won
What Happens When Public Transit Becomes Free?…
Have you heard that in Tallinn, Estonia, public transportation is free for residents? Not only has it been free since 2013, but it also works great. According to The Economist, “The buses are on time, the trams are shiny and new, and passengers usually get a seat.” And that’s not all. Far from draining city […]
Can We Find a Cure for Aging?…
According to Joseph Coughlin, an expert on aging and founder of MIT’s AgeLab, there are two simple questions that can determine how well you’ll navigate your later years: “Who’s going to change the light bulb, and how are you going to get an ice cream cone?” These appeared in a recent New Yorker article by […]
Let’s Look at This Straight in the Eye…
In conversations on Value Investing, references to the 1962 New York Mets have been coming up more often, and that’s not a good thing. The 1962 Mets are beloved for losing a staggering 120 games — a record for the history books that spurred then-manager Casey Stengel to despair, “Can’t anybody here play this game?” […]
Why Selling Seems Harder Than Buying…
Why is it that selling a stock can seem so much harder than buying? We admit that we feel that way, and we suspect many other investors do too. Rationally, it doesn’t make any sense because the process behind buying and selling are the same – two sides of the same coin, so to speak. […]
Quality Matters…
Between 1976 and 2017, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway delivered an average annual return of 18.6% over Treasury bill rates — easily beating the stock market’s excess return of 7.5%. That is not just a good run for a few years or a decade. It’s an extraordinary record spanning four decades. On a risk-adjusted basis, Berkshire […]
Even the Best Make Mistakes…
Benjamin Graham, the father of modern stock analysis, was so brilliant that in his last semester at Columbia University, he received job offers from three of the university’s departments – English, Mathematics, and Philosophy. Instead of choosing any of these, however, he went to Wall Street in 1914 and achieved extraordinary results. Over the course […]
The 2-Minute Thought: The Last Edition . . . And A Few More Thoughts
This is the last edition of The 2-Minute Thought. It’s time – and taking a break from the same format week in and week out often is a good idea. But first, a few random thoughts before going: Anders Hall, the head of Vanderbilt University’s investment office, said in a recent interview with SumZero that […]
Remember the Big Picture…
All seemed good when the S&P 500 reached an all-time high on September 20. But by October 29, we were 9.9% lower, with a lot of up and down in between. Gulp? Yikes? If the market has been unnerving you, we understand. For one thing, before October, we enjoyed some pretty smooth sailing, and when […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Handling Investment Pain
I really enjoyed a recent blog by Cliff Asness of investment firm AQR Capital. It’s called “Liquid Alt Ragnarök?” and it’s on how to deal with the intense pain of investments going badly. Liquid Alt is the name of AQR’s investment strategy. It’s explained in the paper, but that’s not the important part. The important […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Extreme Stock Price Reactions
Recently, there have been some pretty extreme stock price reactions after earnings announcements. Why would Chinese test prep company New Oriental Education trade down by 17% after announcing a negative 2% earnings surprise — while the shares of apparel company VF Corp see a drop of 11% on a 9% positive earnings surprise and higher […]
What Amazon Has Done To Us…
The “Amazon Effect” usually refers to the way Amazon completely disrupted the retail market. It pushed some bricks-and -mortar competitors out of business and knocked others off their feet for a bit until they could regain their bearings in a changed world. It didn’t matter if a company competed directly against Amazon or not. By […]
