Stock Picking Archives - Intentional Investor

The Great Financial Eclipse: How Eclipsing What and Why

January 30, 2024January 26, 2024 by jim

picture of a total eclipse of the sun — Image by A Owen from Pixabay

I enjoy (safely) viewing and photographing eclipses. It’s a rare opportunity to see a striking phenomenon. But now I’m viewing an extremely unpleasant eclipse.

I was asked to answer the question: How can you create a security that appeals to high net worth individuals?

I didn’t like most of the other answers because that question hides the right questions. The right question, the one to start with, is: “What is an investment which would be more profitable to the high net worth investor than what he can already get?”

Unfortunately it is normal for the marketing How to eclipse What and Why in the mind of a financial manager who wants our money. They are far more interested in marketing a product than in creating a good product. What would it look without that eclipse?

One last Scaramucci speech to analyze

February 18, 2023September 7, 2017 by jim

Baseball player clearly out What did Anthony Scaramucci do before briefly entertaining us/appalling us as press secretary? He was the very successful founder of Skybridge Capital. By successful, I mean that he made a lot of money from mom and pop investors and provided them with below average returns. See Skybridge Capital’s own dismal report card.

In the very engaging Freakonomics broadcast of The Stupidest Thing You Can Do With Your Money, the host, Stephen Dubner, interviews Scaramucci about his hatred of the Fiduciary Rule and of index funds. Scaramucci’s answers are worth thinking about. It’s a shame he didn’t think about them.

Good News for Managed Funds?

August 24, 2018August 31, 2016 by jim

Grim reaper waiting at end of tunnel

It’s been a tough year, decade, lifetime for managed stock funds. A managed stock fund is one where the manager guesses which stocks will be most profitable even though all other fund managers have the same information he does.

What have managed funds had to put up with?

The Only Thing We Have to Fear is…

August 24, 2018June 23, 2016 by jim

Scared child peering through a burlap sack

…fear ourselves

Why? Surely if anyone is on our side it’s by definition US!

Sadly, any addict and many love songs prove otherwise, also with investing there are a number of ways we’re our own worst enemies.

Mutual Fund Survivors

August 24, 2018April 30, 2016 by jim

First Place Ribbon

How should you pick the best mutual funds?

Best performer last year?
Featured in a magazine?
Outperformer over time?
Read more

Is Investing Gambling?

February 22, 2019March 5, 2016 by jim

Spinning roulette wheel

People frequently say that investing in the stock market is just gambling.
– Is that true?
– Would it be good if that were true? Let’s find out.

What’s Wrong With Women?

February 22, 2019February 18, 2016 by jim

Women don’t tend to invest as well as they could, getting far lower returns than the market average. How bad a problem is it? What should be done?

What’s the problem? It comes down to our confidence in one area.

Is it Hard to Start Investing?

December 8, 2021November 23, 2015 by jim

Rosie the Riveter saying "We Can Do It!"

Do you have problems getting started? Most people do, so the same solutions that work for them should work for you. Don’t feel you have to begin perfectly and accomplish everything immediately–that’s not how anything else in your

life has ever worked.

The Smart Penny #1: The Gambler’s Fallacy

August 24, 2018October 6, 2015 by jim

Small pile of pennies

If you flip a coin and get heads 4 times in a row, the next flip is likely to be tails, right? That reasoning, which often makes intuitive sense to us, is dead wrong. We start from something true: coin flips tend to average out to half heads, half tails. If you jump from that to assuming that past coin flips affect future ones, you’re implicitly saying that the coin remembers and acts.

Two Ways to Lose When It’s Easier to Win

August 24, 2018September 24, 2015 by jim

Tiger and mirror image

With the stock market returning, on the average, about 10% a year, it seems extremely easy to make money. There are two ways to lose though, and both are very popular. As Martin Luther said, “human reason is like a drunken man on horseback: set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other.'” Many people in each generation distrust the market and refuse to “gamble” with their money. That lasts for a long time, but after it becomes extremely obvious that others are making money, the distrustful give in and buy whatever just went up in price, only to see it go down, whereupon they sell, locking in the loss, and convincing themselves that they were right to be distrustful.