My Favorite Posts This Week

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 one of the lowest is for kids seven to twelve.  Younger kids follow their instincts.  Older kids overthink and panic.  This maps over to investing in that knowing a little bit can lead to devastating over-confidence.
• Is Robert Shiller Right that Passive Investing is Dangerous? – Cullen Roche, Chicken Farmer – This is a sensible layout of one argument in the active/passive debate, pointing out that the sides often aren’t even debating the same points.
• How to Deal with Market Moving News – Ben Carlson – Binary thinking and single variable analysis are killers to long-term portfolio success.
• Backtested Strategies: Real or Random? – Doug Grim, Vanguard – As someone who sees a ton of backtests, I love Vanguard’s approach here.  A portfolio of stocks whose names begin with the letters S, M, A, R, or T (a SMART portfolio, groan) beat the index.  So what does that mean?

• Male Mammoths Died in ‘Silly Ways’ More Often Than Females, Study Finds – This sounds about right.