I went to a smaller school in my early education days. It ran from kindergarten through 8th grade and had probably 300-400 students at the most. My grade had maybe 30-35 kids in it and, except for a couple of kids coming or going over the years, we all stayed together in every class over our 8 years there (they didn’t have kindergarten at that school when we started). Every year, the higher-grade classes (probably […]

People under the age of 40 have never experienced a prolonged bear market. That’s an entire generation of investors for whom Buy the Dip has always worked, and they never had to wait long for it. They don’t know what it’s like to wait 2, 3, 4 or more years to breakeven. After the financial crisis, I spent a decade convincing investors they needed to take more risk. Now I have to convince people to take less risk. I’m not very good at it, yet. It’s a new skillset. Greed is absolutely a more difficult emotion to overcome than fear. That must be why Greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. I miss when social media rewarded authenticity. Today, social media rewards people who become a caricature of a role they play to satisfy the algorithm. Once a person surrenders to a popular online persona, they lose a little bit of their ability to live an authentic life. More followers magnify this problem. During the mid 2010’s, there were communities on Twitter sharing opinions, research, and information with humor and wit. I could connect with like-minded people all over the world, simply by typing a thought in less than 140 characters. All text, no photos, no videos. Today every moment of ‘life’ must be carefully recorded, curated, edited, and shared. Those who know their best camera angles and duck lips are rewarded. Extra points for the fast-talking voice over narration scripts. We are truly living in Gary Shteyngart’s dystopian future from Super Sad True Love Story. People will find any reason to hate bonds. After the financial crisis, interest rates were so low, that people ditched bonds for other alternatives. They increased their risk allocation to equities, bought copious amounts of private investment funds, and held cash on the sidelines. Today, the excuse is that bond prices are at risk on rising interest rates. The double digit bond market decline in 2022 didn’t help the case. Why own bonds when stocks have gone up double digits for the past four years? But bonds are more attractive than they’ve been in half a generation. Long-term TIPs had a real yield of 3% earlier this year, the highest rate since 2008. Municipal bonds have after-tax yields over 7% in high tax states like California and New York. Often the best time to buy an asset class is when it is the most hated. AI will make critical thinking skills both more valuable and harder to obtain. There is a reason students have to learn how to write a proper essay, with a thesis, supporting evidence, and a conclusion. The process of constructing an essay teaches reason and judgment. Math students roll their eyes at having to perform calculations by hand, but how else can one learn to properly use a calculator or a spreadsheet without understanding the mechanics of solving a formula? The internet has been a cheat code for three decades. Before that, we had Cliff’s Notes if we didn’t