News Bears, Beats, Bitcoin Posted on December 6, 2017December 6, 2017 By Matt In honor of my favorite vignette from The Office… Question: What kind of bear is best? ‘Tis the season for market predictions (and forgetting last year’s predictions). The optimists predict low single digit returns for equities. The bears predict bear things. Which means no one expects even decent stock market… Read more
My Favorite Posts This Week Posted on November 17, 2017November 16, 2017 By Matt I try to share good posts via Twitter. A bunch of people were writing solid stuff this week: A Little Knowledge is Dangerous – Nick Maggiulli – Surprising stat about survival rates for people lost in the wild. Kids six and under have a surprisingly high survival rate while… Read more
News Moar Bitcoin! Posted on November 16, 2017 By Matt After my last post about Bitcoin, I got a lot of, “So… Bitcoin?” No one has a concrete opinion on this thing except the evangelists, but everyone wants to discuss it. Skeptics seem more concerned about staying in their lane than dragging down crypto – they don’t understand it, they… Read more
News I Changed My Mind On Bitcoin Posted on November 8, 2017 By Matt I changed my mind on Bitcoin a few weeks ago. A bunch of smart people had made public comments on it, generating buzz. I was going to write up a short summary for our investment team with pros and cons, ultimately concluding that Bitcoin was garbage. But then I did… Read more
News Update on Everyone’s Favorite $37 Billion Hedge Fund Posted on October 10, 2017 By Matt It’s Harvard. The $37 billion hedge fund is Harvard. More specifically, I’m referencing Harvard’s endowment. When Harvard announced yet another management change last year, I was skeptical. It seemed to me that Jane Mendillo inherited a mess created by an intellectual mercenary (who left his next employer under undesirable circumstances… Read more
News H4ck3d Posted on September 8, 2017 By Matt H4ck3d The big news this morning is the Equifax hack. One of the handful of companies that compresses your financial life down into a single number got hacked, possibly exposing credit card numbers, social security numbers, names, and birth dates to unsavory characters. While credit card issuers can just issue… Read more
Weekend Reads Posted on August 26, 2017August 25, 2017 By Matt Some fun reads and shameless self-promotion I take the L on high yield A discussion of taxing bitcoin. Isn’t avoiding tax part of the point of an anonymous currency? Bill Nye may have had his face ripped off by Hollywood accounting Shocker: A third of high-end real estate deals may… Read more
News For William’s First Day of Second Grade Posted on August 22, 2017 By Matt Today’s post is a departure from the norm of investment news and snark. I’m going to share a bit about my son, William, and ask you to spend a minute of your day to think about his cause. William was born in 2010 with Autosomal Recessive Polycystic Kidney Disease, or… Read more
News Argentina and the Frog Posted on June 23, 2017 By Matt Like many classic fables, the story of the frog and the scorpion can be traced back to many cultures, each with their own twist. Aesop’s version is here. A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across… Read more
News It’s a Major Award! Posted on June 22, 2017 By Matt Walk into certain advisors’ offices and you’ll see plaques lining the walls with titles like ‘Chairman’s Roundtable’ . Have they been honored for their investment prowess? Perhaps their trustworthy nature? It certainly sounds important – like a major award. In reality, it’s a sales award. That’s not something you’d generally… Read more