Category Archives: General Investing

Post-World War II retirement planning was easy. We had pensions. There was income from Social Security. And we had our own savings. Those three things made up for a sturdy three-legged stool that took us though a worry-free retirement. Pensions have all but gone the way of the dodo bird. The Social Security situation isContinue reading “The Three-Legged Stool”

Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett coined the term “The Magnificent Seven” or Mag 7 for a group of stocks that have come to dominate the stock market lately1. These stocks are Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla and Meta. Markets are long-term efficient but sometimes they can get short-term nutty. I feel some ofContinue reading “The Magnificent Seven”

We have estate taxes here. That means if you die with too much money, you (your estate) have to pay a wealth tax beyond all the taxes you have already paid while you were alive. The estate tax rates can be as high as 40 percent but why should you care? You’ll be dead. ButContinue reading “How Estate Taxes Work & Why They Are A Good Thing”

Robert Stock earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Princeton university and a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon. He spent nine years working as a researcher in the Directed Energy Group at MIT’s Lincoln lab where he performed simulations of high-energy laser systems for missile defense. He later switched careers to money management and ran theContinue reading “The More Complex Your Investments, The More Likely They’ll Blow Up”

Millennials have had it rough. Between student loans and an ever rising cost of living, there is nary a chance of having anything leftover to put towards long-term goals like retirement. The struggle is real but try they must. And then there are the lucky few who make great incomes. They are in that catbirdContinue reading “If I Were A Millennial”

The value of an investment today is the sum of all the cash flows that investment is going to generate over the life of that investment, discounted to the present at an appropriate discount rate. That applies to anything that is deemed an investment. And then there is the Efficient Markets Hypothesis that states thatContinue reading “An Investment’s Return vs. An Investor’s Return”

Retirement is expensive. It is expensive because the longer we live, the more years we’ll spend in retirement than saving for it. The other way to put it is that we are likely to have spent more years retired than working. The task, hence, is big. Not to mention the fact that there are otherContinue reading “Permission To Spend”

Alice Schroeder in her book, The Snowball describes how Warren Buffett acquired shares in the Coca-Cola company. Buffett had been wanting to buy Coca-Cola shares for quite some time but couldn’t because they never got cheap enough for his taste. The 1987 stock market crash gave him that chance. The world, though, knew who Buffett was so ifContinue reading “Real Investing”

We all pay into the Social Security system through FICA taxes each year. FICA is short for the Federal Insurance Contributions Act that also includes paying for Medicare, but we’ll leave that discussion to later. The Social Security system, as designed, is set up as a transfer payment from the folks who are currently workingContinue reading “Decoding Social Security”

Albert Einstein is a universal symbol of genius. He discovered the theory of relativity, won a Nobel Prize in physics, and made scientific advances in gravity, cosmology, radiation, theoretical physics, statistical mechanics, and quantum theory. So, wouldn’t an investor be blessed to have the smarts like his? Einstein lost his life savings – including his Nobel PrizeContinue reading “The Right Process & A Good-Enough Plan”