In ice hockey, if you’re down by one goal and the clock is ticking down, should you take the chance of pulling your goalie to get a sixth attacker on the ice and increase your chances of scoring? And if you decide to go for it, when is the optimal time to pull the goalie? […]
Julie Won
The 2-Minute Thought: On Investment Errors – Part II
When do you know your investment decision was wrong? That was the topic of my post last week. I wrote that you may not know if you are right or wrong at a given moment, but eventually you will — after enough time has passed. As part of my examination of our errors among the […]
The 2-Minute Thought: When Investments Go Wrong
Columbia Business School professor and investing guru Bruce Greenwald has said that you do not need to be right all the time to be a good investor. He has said that if you can get things roughly right 60 – 65% of the time, you’ll end up in the top 1% of investors. That would […]
What the S&P 500’s Composition Tells Us…
The S&P 500 is an index of 500 large U.S. stocks weighted by their market capitalization or market value. We know it today as one of the most important gauges of U.S. stock performance, covering a broad swath of 11 sectors. But when the index started in 1957 in its current form, its composition was […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Secular Decline . . . or Not?
Do people still go to movie theaters? And will they keep going in the future? It’s a tough question because 2017 was a really tough year for theaters. Bloomberg wrote that 2017 was the worst year for movie ticket sales in the U.S. in over two decades. The Atlantic called last summer “Hollywood’s summer from […]
The 2-Minute Thought: A Reminder that a Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing
It was Alexander Pope who said, “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” and according to Carmen Sanchez and David Dunning in the Harvard Business Review, it’s true. It’s not complete beginners that need to worry. According to Sanchez and Dunning, when people are entirely new to a task, they stay alert and cautious. The […]
The Avocado as Emblem of Free Trade…
If you like avocados, be thankful for global trade. Be thankful for the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. And be thankful for Mexico, the world’s top producer, for enabling us to feed our avocado obsession. Yes, avocados have become a bit of an obsession for Americans — especially younger Americans. The hashtag #avocado […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Amazon’s Shareholder Letters
Amazon’s shareholder letter for 2017 isn’t out yet, but it will be soon, and if you haven’t been a regular reader of Amazon’s letters, it might be worth looking out for it. Even if you’re not an Amazon investor or fan, these yearly letters are fascinating. The classic letter (and the most famous one) is […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Whither global leadership?
Gallup has been asking people for decades if they approve or disapprove of the leadership of the U.S. and other nations around the world. Always take surveys with a grain of salt, but the results for 2018 must be saying something (Gallup, “Rating World Leaders: 2018”). Among the interesting findings: Around the world, approval of […]
The 2-Minute Thought: The Final Four of Investment Rules
At the end of 2014, Morgan Housel wrote out his 16 investment rules to live by for an article in The Wall Street Journal. And while Housel didn’t write the article during the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, I somehow always associate it with the “Sweet Sixteen” and think about it in March. There are […]
How Money Makes Us Feel…
Financial writer Morgan Housel once contrasted the financial lives of two very different people: One was Grace Groner, who was born in rural Illinois in 1909, started working as a secretary during the Great Depression, bought used clothing and never owned a car. The other was Richard Fuscone, who attended Dartmouth, got an MBA from […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Investing Is a Social Exercise
In one of his great papers on the ten attributes of great investors, Michael Mauboussin writes that “investing is an inherently social exercise” (“Thirty Years: Reflections on the Ten Attributes of Great Investors, Michael J. Mauboussin, Dan Callahan, Darius Majd, Credit Suisse, August 4, 2016). That’s both fact and warning. The fact is that investing […]
