Long before search engines there was Yahoo!. It was the directory – started as a list of Jerry Yang’s and David Filo’s favorite sites – for the internet before Google took over the world. There was competition – AltaVista, Infoseek, Lycos, and a long list of others – but Yahoo! was it. Anyone who grew up during the internet boom knew about it and used it and, I bet, many secretly still use it today.

But what really made Yahoo! stand out at that time, was something few internet companies ever attained. Profits! It was profitable by the end of 1996. A truly rare feat. It was a dot-com darling at the time, peaking around a $125 billion market cap. This 1999 Fortune article sums up the period well. Continue Reading…

The search for the best returns possible hasn’t changed in centuries. There’s a need to “beat the market” or your peers. It’s human nature. But how you go about doing it is the question.

In 1988 speech, Charlie Ellis explained that superior results are only gained in one of three ways: Continue Reading…

The benefits of index funds are obvious – you’re guaranteed to match the returns of the index (i.e. the market), minus fees. Of course, that comes with one rarely discussed caveat: market risk.

As easy as it is to say invest passively or buy and hold, you still must sit through the risk, to earn the return. Investors still have trouble in that area. And rightly so. Not everyone is equipped to handle the risk despite the benefits.

But what we’re now seeing is that the line between investment and benchmark is blurring. What once was a yardstick is now a target. Continue Reading…