At the end of every year, I do a quick review of the blog and highlight the “best of” in case you missed something.
This year, the blog added:
- 73 new blog posts. The most popular are below.
- 8 new book notes (reading took a hit this year). Brings the total notes to 104 books.
- 40 new quotes. There are now 1,211 finance-related quotes collected and sourced. Philip Fisher quotes were the most popular by author. The most popular quote topic was risk management.
- 67 new pieces were added in the Library.
- 59 extended quotes from those pieces added to the Notebook. Brings the total to 1,446 available to members.
When I started this sixteen years ago, I never expected to do it this long. Thank you for reading and share! I’m grateful for you, the readers, for keeping me plugging along even when some of the writing falls flat. The biggest takeaway over the years is I never know what will resonate. It’s always a surprise to see what others find interesting.
This year’s “best of” list include an historical dive into editorial cartoons on tariffs, learning the wrong lessons in bull markets, why you should be more like a casino as an investor, and Charley Ellis applying lessons from golf to investing.
Finally, this the second to last post of the year (the “weekend reads” on Friday is the last). Have a Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year!
Tilting the Odds in Your Favor – J. Paul Getty compared speculating to gambling and investing to casinos because, over time, the odds are tilted in the casino’s favor. This post expands on the idea of investing more like a casino with a few other ways to improve your long-term odds of success.
Lessons from the 2025 Berkshire Meeting – The annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting and letter is filled with lessons for everyone. This year’s meeting — Warren Buffett’s last year on stage — did not disappoint.
Same As It Ever Was – Too often we learn the wrong lessons in bull markets. “Buy the dip” is one of those lessons that works until it doesn’t. Unfortunately, market history is filled with moments where an extended bear market wiped out all those chanting a similar mantra.
Playing the Ultra Long Game – A reader asked how to invest money with a time horizon of a century or more? Management and investment approach must be consistent. But most important is fees. One thing high fees are guaranteed to do over a century is enrich the fund manager more than you.
Wise Words on Market Cycles – Market cycles are inevitable. However, the lack of uniformity, the inconsistency, keeps us guessing. In some cases, it leads to investor complacency or skepticism that a cycle has turned. Also, none of this is new. These wise words on market cycles have been shared over the centuries.
When Markets Concentrate – The growing concern over the size of the largest companies in the S&P 500, in relation to the rest of the index led to this post on market concentration. It looks at the weighting and valuation of the 10 largest companies in the S&P 500 over the last two decades. It also discusses the risks and options to consider for your portfolio.
Make Holding On for the Long Term Easy – Tommy Armour simplified the game of golf down to playing the shot that made the next shot easy. The same can be said for investing. Make the investment decisions today that make your future decisions easy. This post expands on that idea.
Copycats, Leverage, and the Downfall of Investment Trusts – Wall Street is an industry of imitators. Find a strategy or financial innovation that makes money and you’ll find a growing line of copycats trying to recreate the same rewards. One of those copycat crazes this year was crypto treasury companies which had similarities to the investment trust craze in the 1920s.
Fred Schwed Jr: Speculator Hero Worship – Fred Schwed Jr told the story of how his father speculated in the market, got ridiculously rich, blew up, and then he somehow repeated that process until he blew up one to many times. And he was admired for it. His father’s fatal flaw was the inability to take money off the table when was he was rich. He always had to risk it all. There’s a lesson in there.
The Lighter Side of Tariffs – The tariff announcement this past April led to a deep dive into the history of tariffs in the U.S. Not your typical deep dive either. Editorial cartoons captured the political discourse around tariffs throughout the late 1800s through the 1920s. The messaging and perception back then should sound familiar today.
Book Notes: The four most read book notes this year are as follows:
- The First Crash: Lessons from the South Sea Bubble by Richard Dale
- The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracián
- The Lords of Creation by Frederick Lewis Allen
- The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda
Related Reads: