How should we think about Powerball?
- Harmless indulgence?
- Best option for retirement?
- Self destruction 2 bucks at a time?
- At least it helps the schools?
- Preys on the poor?
Who’s on my side? – Part 1 – Financial Advisors
Do you need a financial advisor/broker/expert?
What is an advisor for?
What is an advisor obligated to do for you?Do you even need an advisor?
What is an advisor for?
What is an advisor obligated to do for you?Do you even need an advisor?
Shouldn’t Investing be Fun?
Should investing be fun or a grim, relentless, chore?
There’s a lot at stake depending on how we answer:
- If it’s unpleasant, maybe we won’t do it.
- If it’s fun, maybe it’s a waste, like lottery tickets.
Is it Hard to Start Investing?
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.
What is Diversification?
If you look at good material on investing for any length of time, you’ll read about diversification. This is the basic wisdom of not keeping all of your eggs in one basket. While there’s still no free lunch, diversification is a close second because on the average it both makes you more money and reduces your risk.
So, how do you do it?
How Do I Start Investing?
Saving enough for retirement, putting money aside for your kid’s college education, figuring out what you need when and how to get it – these are daunting. Where do you begin?
Is the CEO a Problem Child?
If a CEO messes up, you pay for it. (I’m assuming that you 1) Own the stock or 2) Live in America). Given that average Fortune 500 CEO compensation is over 10 million, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to demand that the CEO add value.
Let’s look at the big questions…
The Smart Penny #2: Coins that Predict the Future
By the end of this post, if you aren’t convinced, I’ll sell you my “smart penny” which correctly predicted whether a stock would go up or down for ten days straight. If you buy the penny, which I will try very hard to persuade you not to do, I’ll get a new batch of pennies and start flipping, If I have about a thousand pennies, one of them is likely to “predict” ten stock results, just by the law of averages.
The Smart Penny #1: The Gambler’s Fallacy
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.
Not all that is gold glitters…
What about investing in silver, gold, platinum, palladium or other metals? Is that a way to avoid the unpredictability of the stock market?