Sun Tzu observed that “if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of 100 battles.” And as pat as it is to compare investing to war, it is also apt. For every investment is a transaction between a buyer and a seller, which means that every trade, on some […]
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Dual Doubts…
It seems that there has been a lot of interest in dual momentum investing out there of late. And I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised. After all, the momentum story was interesting and convincing enough for me personally to move me off of my strong predilection for boglehead style passive investing (for better or […]
Two Faced investing
This is my final post in my “cowards” investment philosophy series.* You will remember that the central thread tying this series together is the idea that when it comes to investing, not losing money ends up being far more powerful than making extra money in the long term. To this end we have discussed aggressive […]
Getting Trendy
So if our overarching goal here is to win big by avoiding big downward movements in the value of our investments, we have already covered some pretty decent ways of achieving this. In my most recent post in this series, I discussed the value anomaly and the idea of buying companies at stock prices well […]
Liquidation Proclamation
This whole series of posts started with a Warren Buffett quote, so you knew I was going to get back here. Back to value investing. But before I dive in, once again, to the value anomaly, a confession.I have some serious reservations about including value investing under the umbrella of strategies to be pursued in order […]
Pumping Iron
So where were we? We’ve discussed the surprising importance of minimizing the loss of capital, and how not losing your capital ends up being much more important in the long run than finding extra returns in the stock market. We’ve talked about the importance of diversification for buy-and-hold investors, and how the aggressive diversification across […]
The Coward’s Game: That Old Standby
My central thesis in this series is that it is much wiser for investors to focus on the avoidance of losing money, rather than on making extra money in the market. The first thing to say is exactly how not to do this. Which is to say, “whatever you do, don’t follow your gut.” While […]
On the Wisdom of Cowardice
Warren Buffett has so many great quotes. There’s the one about how idiots eventually run good companies. There’s that other one about today’s shade coming from a tree planted long ago. He’s a folksy guy and damned smart, so his quotes are like little Yogi Berra gems without all of the unintentional irony. But of all of his […]
I suck at market timing
I recently copped to a breakdown. I decided not to continue to be a passive index fund investor merely rebalancing my slice and dice portfolio once per year.(Because smart money is so overrated.) Instead I decided to jump off a cliff and go all in dual momentum. My reasons were varied. It really was a […]
Jumping off a Cliff
I feel a little bit like a fundamentalist preacher who woke up one morning and realized he did not believe in God. Or not so much that he didn’t believe in god, more that he found he also believed in a larger, cooler, non Judeo-Christian god. Up until this point I’ve done a pretty decent […]
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