“A ship in harbor is safe–but that is not what ships are built for”
John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic, 1928
The least surprising news flash of the entire year ran in last Monday’s (12/22) Wall Street Journal, under the heading “Investors Lose Faith, Pull Out Record Amounts“.
No kidding. Now they tell us.
You can link […]
The idea of a hedge fund always made sense.
The ability to zig zag through a churning market, taking both long and short positions.
What soured me on the category was the obscene reach for fees. And the mandatory lockup periods preventing timely exits.
In an ideal world, we could invest in hedge funds that charged reasonable […]
It’s refreshing, in a way, that not all the animal spirits have been thrashed out of the financial product manufacturers.
No small accomplishment, in this dispirited market, as we continue to circle the drain, having pulled the plug on private ownership of the commanding heights of our economy.
ETF’s Really Overreaching
I refer to the juiced-up ETF’s (Exchange […]
Looks like we’ll have to rewrite most of the investment textbooks after this year.
The cherished concept of portfolio diversification has taken a big hit and may never fully recover.
Back in the day…
The conventional wisdom was that non-correlating assets would not move in tandem. If foreign stocks tanked, domestic stocks would take up the slack. […]
Too bad there is no inoculation for this nasty bug emerging in Asia.
I had never heard of it, until November 6, when I read Laura Santini’s article in the Wall Street Journal, “Asian Investors ‘Accumulate’ Big Losses on Risky Contracts” (page C1).
In the grand scheme of things, it’s not the worst idea that ever came […]
Something to think about as the market’s ups-and-downs continue.
Every sell order executed since the bottom fell out on September 29th has had a corresponding buy order.
Of course, the imbalance is lopsided. That’s how markets lose value…when the sellers outnumber the buyers.
The mirror image is when buyers outnumber sellers, and bull markets emerge.
And that […]
A quote from economic historian John Steele Gordon…
“Human nature predisposes us to recognize depression easily and quickly, but prosperity, like happiness, is most easily seen in retrospect.”
Humans are social animals with strong herding instincts. We are most comfortable being right in the middle of the pack.
We may not be right, but we’re comfortable doing […]
Choose from the above menu.
But don’t overreach.
Never All Three at the Same Time
Its tough for anyone in our want it all, do it all, culture to make hard choices.
Back in the day, the operative rule was you could easily have one out of three, and if you were lucky…two.
And someday the rule may come back […]
