October 2013

Silly Little Bitches

It only took five years, $2.5 trillion in stimulus and 140% in S&P gains for you to go right back to acting like a silly little bitch again with your money. You are opening up “play money” accounts to trade the markets and buy obscenely-valued stocks that you know goddamn well are going to crash…

Perversity in the Housing Market

A young client of mine told me he and his wife had been outbid on a handful of houses this past spring, despite the fact that they had literally begun showing up to see homes for sale with a checkbook and engineer in tow. They couldn’t figure out who it was buying up all the…

Matt Yglesias is not impressed with your perennial crash call

I predict a crash. Okay, now I’m covered. Matt Yglesias takes on the myth-making surrounding those who predict market crashes on a regular basis and then take credit when one eventually materializes. One of the worst things about 2008 was that it bailed out a lot of misanthropes who were then able to capitalize on…

Three Reasons Active Mutual Funds Suck These Days

Brendan Conway picks up on three basic truths about the State of Active Management from a paper by Smead Capital director of research Tony Scherrer. There are three reasons why the modern actively managed mutual funds suck, according to the research: 1. Benchmark-hugging has now grown into such a large phenomenon that, when combined with traditional index funds,…