Most Recent Stingy News
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| Mr Market rules |
| 05/12/25 3:37 PM EST | Markets |
| "The curious thing about financial markets is that they do not respond to what most of us would regard as news." |
| More Markets: Beanie babies + bimetallism |
| US treasuries, deficits and credibility |
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| Beanie babies + bimetallism |
| 05/12/25 3:27 PM EST | Markets |
| "Beanie Babies in the 1990s were a classic bubble involving small stuffed animal toys. The bubble featured a seemingly scarce commodity and an exciting new trading and communications technology, the internet. Early buyers were richly rewarded by price increases, attracting more buyers. Burton and Jacobsen (1999) estimate that the annual returns on Beanie Babies were between 159% and 176% from 1994 to 1999. But the bubble collapsed after 1999, perhaps because Beanie Babies offered no vision of social justice." |
| More Markets: US treasuries, deficits and credibility |
| Suffering in private |
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| US treasuries, deficits and credibility |
| 05/12/25 3:21 PM EST | Markets |
| "The damage has been done. How much? Aside from higher yield and a lower stock market it's hard to measure. You also have constant attacks on institutions. The next couple months will be very noisy. You have tariffs and trade talk, tax bill, inflation, a massive unsustainable deficit and an economic slowdown. Followed by midterms elections. Mistakes have been made and that increased pain for the people. This is about a country's reputation." |
| More Markets: Suffering in private |
| Got diversification |
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| Go for the gold |
| 05/12/25 3:19 PM EST | Gold |
| "There is no math that an investor can do to determine an appropriate price for gold. It's worth only what other investors are willing to pay for it, and that, in my view, is why its price can fluctuate so widely." |
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| Do it for the kids |
| 05/12/25 3:17 PM EST | Books |
| "Welcome to the Jonathan Clements Getting Going on Savings Initiative and the accompanying book, The Best of Jonathan Clements: Classic Columns on Money and Life. The savings initiative aims to get young adults started in the financial markets with $1,000 contributions to Roth IRAs, with those contributions funded by both direct donations and the royalties from the book. The book consists of more than 60 of my old Wall Street Journal columns." |
| More Books: The trading game |
| Die with zero |
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| Berkshire Hathaway 2025 AGM |
| 05/05/25 7:26 PM EST | Buffett |
| "Warren Buffett presides over the 2025 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting" [video] |
| More Buffett: Cash |
| Warren Buffett at BRK's AGM |
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| Be minimally extractive |
| 05/05/25 7:22 PM EST | Thrift |
| "The late Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, did more to help the individual investor than anyone in history. And since this week marks the 50-year anniversary of Vanguard's founding, I thought it would be nice to illustrate the unrivaled impact that Bogle had on the investment industry." |
| More Thrift: Advice for the kids |
| Spending rules |
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| Off the hook |
| 05/05/25 7:16 PM EST | Government |
| "After years of riding the wave of easy money and effortless asset appreciation, many sophisticated investors were caught off guard by the market's negative response. While tariffs may have been the catalyst for the recent decline in stock prices, they certainly aren't responsible for this cycle's elevated valuations. Investing in an asset bubble carries tremendous risks. Pay up and play along, and you assume the risk. We believe prices paid, not tariffs, will be the main source of investor losses when the current market cycle ends." |
| More Government: Trudeau was a poor steward |
| Negative trading in congress |
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| Suffering in private |
| 05/05/25 7:14 PM EST | Markets |
| "Can you make money in a private investment fund? Probably. But I see it as an uphill - and unnecessary - battle." |
| More Markets: Got diversification |
| The Kardashian of money |
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| Got diversification |
| 05/05/25 7:13 PM EST | Markets |
| "Diversifying equity allocations outside of the United States seems like a prudent move in this macroeconomic environment, and, given valuations, international outperformance is a trend that could continue for years to come." |
| More Markets: The Kardashian of money |
| Quantitative instability |
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| The Kardashian of money |
| 05/05/25 7:12 PM EST | Markets |
| "the basis of this wealth is a self-perpetuating set of beliefs, as opposed to an independently valuable economic function." |
| More Markets: Quantitative instability |
| A quantum of confusion |
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| A historical analysis of tariffs |
| 04/27/25 2:!4 PM EST | Taxes |
| "Our analysis suggests that, over the long-term, tariffs have had relatively minor impacts on GDP, inflation, and equity markets. Perhaps most surprisingly, they've had relatively minor impacts on trade imbalances. Perhaps the best way to think about tariffs, then, is simply as a tax like any other." |
| More Taxes: Tariffs will not make america great |
| Trading arguments |
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| No exception |
| 04/27/25 1:44 PM EST | World |
| "While it may be hard to remember, there have been multi-year periods when international stocks have outperformed the U.S. market. In fact, a chart of domestic vs. international stocks looks a little like a sine wave, with performance alternating over time. For that reason, I continue to recommend an allocation to international stocks." |
| More World: Germans are reluctant to invest in stocks |
| War on the world |
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| Tasting retirement |
| 04/27/25 1:42 PM EST | Retirement |
| "I'm trying my hand at retirement. It isn't going so well." |
| More Retirement: Set for life? |
| Never root for a recession |
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| Quantitative instability |
| 04/27/25 1:40 PM EST | Markets |
| "Fire sales by quantitative funds had a significantly larger destabilizing effect on markets compared to traditional mutual funds. For an equivalent-sized fire sale, the market impact of quantitative funds was more than eight times greater. In addition, it takes between one and three months longer for stocks sold by quantitative funds to fully recover." |
| More Markets: A quantum of confusion |
| Buy the bottomless pit |
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| Germans are reluctant to invest in stocks |
| 04/27/25 1:38 PM EST | World |
| "But one result stood out to me in this qualitative research. During the interviews, when people were asked why they didn't invest in equities, they often said (one in three respondents) that equities were too risky. But by far the most common reason why people wouldn't invest in stocks (about half of all respondents) is that they thought it is too expensive and too tedious to set up a stock or fund portfolio." |
| More World: War on the world |
| Back to the bronze age |
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| Why diversification is difficult |
| 04/21/25 2:56 PM EST | Indexing |
| "Diversification isn't about return, it's about risk. It's about smoothing out the financial ride over your lifetime. You know this already. That's the easy part. The hard part is sticking with it even as you underperform in most years. As Brian Portnoy brilliantly stated, 'Diversification means always having to say you're sorry.' And it's true. Most of the time you will feel sorry that you didn't do as well as your best asset class. You'll feel sorry that one (or more) of your positions lost money. And so forth. But this is to be expected. This is what we pay for the benefits of diversification. This is the price of peace." |
| More Indexing: School is in |
| Paying your tuition |
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| School is in |
| 04/21/25 2:54 PM EST | Indexing |
| "These policy shifts are a reminder that, even when everyone seems to agree, things can change. That's why I believe it's best never to go too far out on a limb with investment choices. Nothing is guaranteed." |
| More Indexing: Paying your tuition |
| Index three ways |
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| A quantum of confusion |
| 04/21/25 2:52 PM EST | Markets |
| "My view is that the quantum confusion of 2024 is a symptom of the general degradation of U.S. stock market quality, part of the 'Koreafication' process where the market becomes more retail dominated. I don't want to overstate the quantitative significance of this trend, because as shown in Figure 2, it's mostly confined to small-cap stocks. But it appears that bizarre pricing previously confined to pink sheet stocks is now visible in listed smaller names." |
| More Markets: Buy the bottomless pit |
| Here we go |
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| Why a 4.4% yield might barely deliver |
| 04/21/25 2:50 PM EST | Bonds |
| "At first glance, a 4.4% bond yield seems attractive, especially after years of near-zero interest rates. But hidden beneath the surface, taxes and inflation are silently eroding your returns. By the time they take their cut, that 'safe' yield could leave you with nothing- or worse, less than you started with." |
| More Bonds: U.S. floats idea of defaulting on treasuries |
| Remember the global financial crisis |
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| Buy the bottomless pit |
| 04/13/25 2:46 PM EST | Markets |
| "A basic property of optimal decision-making is that you should act more conservatively when you have less accurate information. As of April 2025, we're confronted with a situation where we have very little historical precedent and the outcomes we observe are extremely volatile. As a logical consequence, we should be cautious in responding to events." |
| More Markets: Here we go |
| When does the market recover? |
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