August 2023 Newsletter In a few short months the portfolio has gone from a small beat to lagging by 2.4% - see performance stats further down. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a nice return, but its concerning as the situation worsened at one point during the month, lagging by 3.5%. I usually start looking … Continue reading Why Does the Market Have Bad Breadth?
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May 2023 NewsletterIf you read my last newsletter, you will know that I made a speculative stock bet with First Republic Bank (FRC). Banks are normally not speculative, they are usually pretty safe, but not in this case. As mentioned before, banks exist almost solely based on the confidence that if you deposit your money … Continue reading How I Lost My Entire Investment!
April 2023 Newsletter In March’s Newsletter I complained about being locked out of my trading account but concluded that it was not the end of the world as most of the time we humans tend to trade with emotion, which in turn, statistically, lowers our annual returns. It just so happens that all the banking … Continue reading Is the Banking System Failing?
March 2023 Newsletter I have been locked out of my trading account... again! This is not the first time, it would appear that even with today’s technology it's difficult to ask for reliable service. To be fair, I am traveling in a van, in central Mexico, nevertheless, you would think that service continuity would be … Continue reading Locked Out of My Account!
As an investor with an economics background, I’m fascinated by cryptocurrency. It’s an innovative form of currency that differs from anything the world has seen since the development of modern money. Crypto isn’t tied to a specific country, it's digital, it’s not easily manipulated, and is backed by complex technology. What’s even more interesting to … Continue reading What You Need to Know About Crypto Currency
2022 was a bad year for investors, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret that might make you feel better. You can still win in a losing year. Yes… even if you’ve lost money. The game is one of relativity, not Einstein’s version… but financial relativity.
I am often asked how I invest to beat the market. I attribute my success to developing simple market strategies but more importantly, following lots of investing rules! For more than a decade, this approach has worked quite well, and I’m sharing it with you here.
October 2022 Newsletter In my July Newsletter, I set out a strategy to start buying positions in the least loved sector if and when the S&P 500 falls below 25% year to date (YTD). After a couple of near misses, the market finally crossed over this threshold albeit for a short time. True to my … Continue reading The Market is Falling, So Why Am I Buying?
I struggled with this question ten years ago when I retired at the age of 48. Everyone wants to know: "How much money do I need to retire early? Is it one million? Is it less? More?". Unfortunately, there is no magic number. Everyone’s situation is different and the answer to this question will depend … Continue reading Retiring Early: How Much Money Do You Need?
Every so often I review a sector within my portfolio to make sure that the individual positions still make sense. A review of my Energy stocks reminded me how much I despise that sector. Why? Because Energy stocks do not act like normal stocks. They have an additional level of complexity based on the underlying … Continue reading Why I Hate Energy Stocks… but Still Have Some