Sublime

When Shakespeare wrote that “it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” he could have been describing the inexplicable daily, month-by-month, or even annual swings in stock prices. My advice to investors: ignore the short-term sound and fury of the emotions reflected in our financial markets, and focus on the produc

Burton Malkiel’s wonderful book A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Malkiel’s central idea is that a stock’s price incorporates all the available knowledge about the value of the company and the best predictions about the future of the stock.

Steve Birch, another of our in-house money managers, started managing money earlier. He took advantage of the roaring bull market of the late 1990s and protected most of his gains by going mainly to cash in the bear market. Between 1998 and 2003, he had gained over 1,300%.

suggested that Kris—who was 35-years-old at the time—should keep things simple: buy the broadest stock index he could for his US exposure, the broadest international index he could for his “world” exposure, and a total bond market index fund that approximated his age. I call it the Global Couch Potato Portfolio. Here’s the allocation I recommended:

The government released a list of more than thirteen thousand past and present Madoff account holders, ranging from hundreds of not very rich Florida retirees to celebrities, billionaires, and nonprofits such as charities and universities. If these legions of investors were easily gulled, often for decades, what does this swindle (and others) say a