Marketwatch published a scare tactic this week loading up several targets for the average investor to blame when they fail. It’s the typical one-sided drivel that’s heavy on noise and light on help.

By the end, the authors served up Wall Street, institutional investors, high frequency trading, regulations, CEOs, financial advisers salespeople, high fee funds, active managed funds, IPOs, M & A, the SEC, and computers.

Oh yeah. Don’t forget the wealthy. Somehow it’s their fault too: Continue Reading…

Richard Thaler wrote an article in the N.Y. Times about how our behavior doesn’t always mesh with economic theory. Basically, our behavior conflicts with their math.

Thaler studies the idea of using nudges to get people to do something they wouldn’t normally do. Really, nudges lower or remove the friction that’s holding us back. These are things we know we should do. We know it’s a good idea. We just don’t want to do it…yet. Friction, of course, is whatever is stopping us from doing all the things we should do. Continue Reading…

Last weekend was the Berkshire Hathaway circus annual meeting. I spent most of that time reading through the notes and watching the media interviews from different sites (links are below). I won’t highlight anything specific, you can dig into it if you want. I will make two observations – on the enormity of Berkshire and learning from Buffett.

First, Berkshire is huge. It’s a ridiculous number of companies now (I don’t have the exact number, Google says more than 80?). The companies stretch into so many areas of the economy that Buffett knows how well the economy is doing, and can see major business/industry changes, before the Fed and anyone else. The information he gets from daily business updates gives him a huge advantage when buying new companies/stocks. Continue Reading…