John Maynard Keynes is known by most as a famous economist whose creative ideas on smoothing out the rough edges of the business cycle have proven repeatedly not to work. However, during his life he was also a money manager and one of the greatest of all time. His ideas on investing have influenced many,…
Our world, and by extension the investment markets that are a reflection of our world, seems to be suffering from a serious case of over-specialization. The advice most often given to the last generation of workers and professionals was to learn all one could about one thing. Become an expert in your field. This is…
Volatility is back in a big way. Since the downgrade of U.S. debt by S&P, the equity markets have been swinging wildly. There is a sense over the last few days that we have finally gotten past all of this as positive momentum has taken over, but I’m not so sure. We are investing in…
Standard & Poor’s (S&P) has downgraded U.S. Treasuries to AA+ from AAA. While this has been discussed for several months, the announcement yesterday evening came as a bit of a surprise. The question is, what does this mean for you? The truth is that I am not really sure, and neither is anyone else, regardless…
I often wonder, what is the person on the other end of this transaction thinking? One of the best investment books of the last decade isFooled by Randomness, by Nassim N. Taleb. Taleb, an options trader by profession, does an excellent job of explaining how humans are hard-coded to find patterns, even when patterns don’t…
