We’ve reached the point in the year when business news transitions to the Warren Buffett reality show. Saturday morning Berkshire Hathaway will release its annual letter. Only this year is the 50th anniversary. So the Buffett watch started a little early with a bit more speculation on what the letter would say.

Most of the business world wants to know about the future – his successor or what company he plans to buy next. I expect he’ll talk about the past, like every other year. And like years past, there’s a good chance you’ll learn something if you read it. Continue Reading…

Robert Shiller announced his CAPE ratio on twitter last week. I mentioned it in a post earlier this week. I won’t post his quote again, so jump over to check it out. In it, he compares today’s CAPE level with the previous high of 2007.

It doesn’t take much to over think it, put two and two together, and see another crash as a foregone conclusion. The reference of ’07 makes that connection. Though, to be fair, Shiller is simply stating a fact, not making a prediction. But my first thought was – what role did the high CAPE in ’07 play in the resulting crisis? Continue Reading…

I spent most of my formative years playing sports – mainly basketball. My own biased belief is athletes have a unique view toward winning and losing because they deal with it earlier in life and more often than most people. It may or may not be true. I have no idea. It’s just my biased experience from sitting in the stands after spending most of my youth on the court.

The early lessons from sports are hard work and team work pay off. As the kids move up the ranks, they learn how to handle winning, losing, and fixing mistakes. Continue Reading…

I’m busy moving servers this week so I dug into my Evernote archives for help. You can find a passive versus active investing article on every single investing site ever. If you don’t, then they probably forgot, or have one on standby for situations just like mine. Anyways, the analogy I use isn’t perfect but it gets my point across. Enjoy.

First, I’ll make this perfectly clear. I’ve never been a fan of arguing passive vs active. It’s a joke and a terrible waste of time on the level of trying to convince a die-hard Republican to vote Democrat. Pushing against a brick wall isn’t fun. Continue Reading…

I don’t know anyone who thought interest rates would stay low for this long or go lower. But falling rates do have one benefit. All you homeowners out there have another opportunity to refinance your mortgage. Mortgage rates fell for most of 2014 to rates we haven’t seen in two years.

Two years ago it looked like the last great chance to lock in historically low mortgage rates. If you missed it, the market gave you a second chance. Current 15 year and 30 year mortgage rates are getting close to those all time lows. You can check the FRED charts below. Continue Reading…