This morning’s Q4 GDP report was a headline miss (2.6% versus an expected reading of 3.2%), mostly explained by the inability of strong consumer spending to overcome investment malaise. Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s economists break it down thusly: Consumer comeback, slower investment Consumer spending surged 4.3% qoq saar, which was the largest increase since 1Q…

I’m having a blast in my new role as Fortune columnist so far, just as I suspected I would when I first got the gig (see: About my new column at Fortune magazine from last October). The stuff I’m doing there is about a very specific topic – the nexus between what happens on Wall…

Nick Murray says “The ability to distinguish between volatility and loss is the first casualty of a bear market.” I turned to one of my favorite passages of his masterpiece Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth this morning as turmoil from overseas and the commodity markets made its way through the headlines. Nick relays a great anecdote…

Patrick O’Shaughnessy attempts to combine all the key attributes in order to create a “Perfect Investor” in a new post at his site, Millennial Invest. I’ll go the other way around and build the absolute worst investor, taking the worst qualities that we can possess to create an absolute Frankenstein monster… 1. Obsesses over each day’s activity…

Posting will be light through the end of this week as I’m off to San Diego to attend the TD Ameritrade National LINC Advisor Conference for the first time. I’ll be speaking on two panels and hoping to learn from the dozens of other speakers throughout the two-day event. I’m told there will be over…