Consumers of investment information are getting short shrift. I see three problems: Producers of the big news shows are looking for the dramatic; Journalists (with a few exceptions) have lost the ability to ask the important questions — the ones that would help investors; All media sources have been unduly influenced by email and tweets. […]
Everyone agrees that the economic recovery has been disappointing. There is no consensus on the cause. Nearly everyone has missed the most crucial element: The crisis of confidence. Confidence is essential to economic success, as we have known for more than a century. Listen to this brief sound clip, instantly recognizable to many. The […]
As stock prices made new highs this week, a frequent media theme was that this was happening — drum roll!!!! —- in spite of the fundamentals. If you listened to the accompanying discussion, you eventually learned what was meant by "fundamentals." For many observers it is some kind of unquantifiable headline risk. As long as […]
In the short-term world of trading, your job is to anticipate the short-term behavior of others. In the world of investing, your job is to take advantage of the short-term behavior of others. Markets render a short-term verdict, but only professors believe them to be efficient. Warren Buffett famously notes (see here for more wisdom): […]
I did not set out to write a trilogy about Europe, but the market is telling us that nothing else matters right now. My long-standing position is that Europe is engaged in a normal democratic political process with a very large number of contending parties. In such matters it is difficult to predict the exact […]