Novel Investor • Compounding investing wisdom...

Interview with the Investor in the Family Podcast

April 21, 2016

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Jon

I sat down with Brian Bain, on the Investor in the Family podcast, to discuss investing and my early life in the finance industry. Brian’s had a bunch of great guests in the past. You can find the episode on iTunes or at Investor in the Family.

It was a fun experience, though I have a newfound respect for the recorded medium. Writing – with the ability to edit – is a lot less nerve-racking than a live interview. So, if I sound like a rambling fool, I’m blaming first-time jitters.

Anyways, I thought I’d expand a bit on my past experience in the industry since I rarely cover it here. Continue Reading…
Happy Hour: Market Mood Swings

April 15, 2016

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Jon

Morgan Housel wrote a great piece on why it’s so hard to predict outcomes. Really, it’s about feelings.

How investors feel about stocks five years from now will have a big impact on performance between now and then. If you could semi-accurately predict broader shifts in market mood, you’d do fairly well for yourself. Except, predicting how people will feel in the future is just as hard as predicting everything else about the future. Continue Reading…
Book Review: The Little Book that Beats the Market

April 13, 2016

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Jon

The Little Book that Beats the Market is Joel Greenblatt’s attempt to explain investing to his kids. In that, he succeeds. But it also offers some insights into his simple investing strategy.

If you’ve read any value investing books before, the first half this Little Book will be familiar. Greenblatt understands that investing is not easy. It takes discipline, work, and patience – areas where investors fail – to put up with manic Mr. Market. Greenblatt offers up his Magic Formula to help the cause.

Greenblatt based the concept of his formula off of another investing strategy by Ben Graham. Graham came up with a simple strategy that bought a basket of 20-30 stocks that were cheap enough to meet Graham’s specific requirements, and without doing additional work, the “results would be quite satisfactory”. Continue Reading…
Happy Hour: Failing Successfully

April 8, 2016

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Jon

Amazon released its annual letter to shareholders and Jeff Bezos touched on several reasons for the companies success.

A customer first mentality was one piece of it. Long term focus was another. As was luck. Lastly, there was a willingness to fail more than its competition. Bezos explains:

Continue Reading…
Graham’s Margin of Safety

April 6, 2016

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Jon

Sometimes we’re wrong. We make mistakes. Bad luck happens.

In a discipline like investing, built on estimates and probabilities, it can happen often. And yet, being wrong is something people don’t think about very often.

The most important lesson – of all the lessons – in The Intelligent Investor, is the concept of margin of safety. Continue Reading…
Happy Hour: Build Your Own Smart Beta

April 1, 2016

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Jon

I don’t own smart beta funds because I don’t believe they fit my strategy.

Instead, I stick with a simple approach, four funds – a US, developed international, emerging markets, and treasury bonds – adjusting the allocation based on valuation. Basically, I move from expensive to cheap and if all equities are expensive then move from expensive to bonds.

That’s the simplified version. Continue Reading…

Interview with the Investor in the Family Podcast

Happy Hour: Market Mood Swings

Book Review: The Little Book that Beats the Market

Happy Hour: Failing Successfully

Graham’s Margin of Safety

Happy Hour: Build Your Own Smart Beta