One of my best friends happens to be a wildly successful real estate investor. Picking up the baton of a family business, he built up a neat little empire of apartment buildings and commercial properties – all by the age of 40. He also happens to hate the stock market. To him, it just doesn’t …
How To Choose Between Real Estate And The Stock Market Read More »
In the personal finance community, you will struggle to find a set of people more vehemently disliked than active money managers. Yours truly certainly shares the sentiment. There are exceptions, of course. Star managers who haven’t (yet) fallen from grace. The rare species who manage to deliver truly superior risk-adjusted returns for their investors. Ultimately, …
“Objects in the rear-view mirror may appear closer than they are”. Right now, the opposite is true. It feels like a lifetime ago – but it has only been 11 weeks since we were trying to find a way forward in the midst of absolute carnage. As I was writing this post, the S&P 500 …
One possible explanation for the recent divergence in stock market performance vis-à-vis the broader economy is the performance of the tech sector. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook now comprise ~22% of the S&P 500 index. It’s no wonder that the stock market held up the way it has. For companies above (perhaps with the …
For anyone who is following the financial markets these days, Monday was an eye-opener. For the first time in history, the price of oil has gone into negative territory. At its nadir, a barrel of WTI (West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark for oil) traded for minus $40. That’s right. If you owned a barrel …
In personal finance, everyone knows what they need to do. The theory is crystal clear: save money, invest regularly, rebalance, buy the dips and so forth. And yet, the reality is that you’ll struggle to find anyone who follows all the rules in the book. Theory always loses to behavioural biases and personal circumstances. In …
The stock market expansion that followed the financial crisis became known as the most hated bull market ever. Despite the tremendous growth and wealth creation, the share of retail investors in the stock market has actually declined from ~65% before the financial crisis to about 55% a decade later. It makes sense. Back in the …
Even in normal times, a big chunk of my days is spent in conversations with what is sometimes known as “smart money”. On the asset management side, this includes active money managers like Fidelity, Legal & General, Invesco, and many other household names. They often hold large positions in companies that we represent, so an …
What The Smart Money Is Thinking Now – And Why You Can Do Better Read More »
