Here’s an investment opportunity for your consideration. It’s managed by an investment committee that seeks to build a portfolio to be representative of the U.S. economy. The committee meets regularly to determine what stocks to add to or remove from the portfolio, and routinely makes between 10-40 changes per year. These decisions are not made…
It’s not unusual for my phone to ring in the wake of a financial crisis. May 6, 2010 was one of those days. Around 2:30 that afternoon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged nearly 1,000 points, only to recover all of those losses 36 minutes later. During the tumult, many exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were priced…
At Holcombe Financial’s recent client learning event about “Behavioral Biases and Their Investment Limitations”, my favorite story was about Sir Isaac Newton’s early investment success and subsequent failure during the South Sea Bubble. In 1720 Newton profited handsomely, earning £20,000 by the time he sold his shares (big bucks in those days). Sounds like an expert…
On our annual ski trip, we decided to ride the California Zephyr, which cuts an unimaginable path through the Rockies. We arrived at the terminal in Denver at 7 am to check our bags and were greeted with something that looked like it came off the set of Indiana Jones. The luggage cart with steel…
A policeman sees a drunk searching for something under a streetlight and asks what he has lost. The man answers he has lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, that he…
Being in Omaha, Nebraska the weekend that Warren Buffett published his annual letter to shareholders was a great moment to spend time reading some of his older letters. All are online, at the Berkshire Hathaway website, which is a testament in itself to his ‘no frills‘ culture. The letters on the website go back to…
After two gate changes and a mad dash at the Atlanta airport, I ducked into the bookstore while I waited for the passengers to deboard our delayed flight. I decided to look at the financial section, and I had to do a double take. David Booth and Eugene Fama from Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) were…
We are all faster and more creative when addressing someone else’s problem than when we’re addressing our own. This is why even the greatest surgeon doesn’t operate on himself. Read the short puzzle below and try to figure out how the prisoner escaped. A prisoner desperately wants to escape. One day he discovers a rope…
Trey Junkin, center for the New York Giants, fumbled the snap making an easy field goal impossible for the kicker, which cost his team the 2003 NFC championship – and maybe the Super Bowl. In a report for the San Francisco Chronicle he said, “I tried to make a perfect snap when all I needed to…
Would you invest in the pay phone today? I hope not. All great investment ideas have a shelf life. Watch video as Rusty explains.