Most Recent Stingy News
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| The overvalued dollar |
| 06/22/25 1:39 PM EST | World |
| "The US dollar remains historically overvalued, even after its recent reversal. Structural factors, cyclical trends, and shifting macroeconomic risks all point toward the potential for further declines in the coming years. Investors with underweight to international equities either due to home country, or recency, bias might want to reconsider that underweight." |
| More World: No longer a serious country |
| Is South Korea the next Japan? |
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| Let's get happy |
| 06/22/25 1:37 PM EST | Behaviour |
| "Want to make sure you're among the 'very happy' group? There is, alas, no way to guarantee that. Still, the happiness research conducted by economists and psychologists can help us better understand why we're happy or unhappy - and it offers some insights into how we might improve our outlook." |
| More Behaviour: The alpha model of Theseus |
| Uncertainty |
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| Eyes forward |
| 06/22/25 1:33 PM EST | Indexing |
| "For most investors most of the time, the data tell us that simplicity and low cost are the way to go. Keeping that in mind may be the best way to tune out whatever might be happening in the next lane." |
| More Indexing: Why diversification is difficult |
| School is in |
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| Defeating smallpox |
| 06/22/25 1:23 PM EST | Health |
| "The Plea is a data-driven documentary that tells the story of the first vaccine and the eradication of smallpox - a modern retelling of one of humanity's greatest triumphs." [video] |
| More Health: Four questions |
| Partisanship predicts passing |
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| Lost decades are rare |
| 06/16/25 4:22 PM EST | Markets |
| "Lost decades are periods where U.S. stocks generate little to no total return for roughly a 10-year period (or longer). The three most prominent lost decades in U.S. stock market history occurred in the 1930s, the 1970s, and the 2000s. In each of these periods, U.S. stocks declined by 50% (or more) and then took around a decade to recover. The good news is that lost decades don't happen too often. In the 10 decades from 1920-2020, only 3 of them would be classified as such. But, do you know what's even better? When we take into account how a typical person invests their money, these lost decades become shorter and less prevalent. " |
| More Markets: It's affordability |
| Drawdowns and recoveries |
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| The institutional cost mirage |
| 06/16/25 4:20 PM EST | Funds |
| "Ennis develops a model correlating alts allocation with total expense ratios for public pension funds, demonstrating that portfolios heavily tilted toward alternatives can easily incur annual costs exceeding 3.6%. Compare this to the near-zero fees of public market index strategies, and the scale of value destruction becomes self-evident." |
| More Funds: Rebuffed: options-based strategies |
| Persistent alpha |
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| The alpha model of Theseus |
| 06/16/25 4:18 PM EST | Behaviour |
| "To be human is to constantly choose between old and new. Should you listen to your favorite playlist or try some new music? Keep your current phone or update to the latest model? It's a tough call. On the one hand, individuals often exhibit conservativism and react too slowly to new information, a fact which plays an important role in some theories of behavioral finance. On the other, Warren Buffett has achieved great success using steadfast adherence to a few simple principles, and I doubt he listens to a lot of new music." |
| More Behaviour: Uncertainty |
| Very bad advice |
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| Uncertainty |
| 06/16/25 4:14 PM EST | Behaviour |
| "The key message I want to convey is this: When you spot an opportunity, don't let uncertainty paralyze decision-making. That's the inability to take action when a big fat pitch comes at you. You must be prepared to strike when an opportunity arises. If you wait for perfect conditions, opportunities will have skate right past you. It will be too late." |
| More Behaviour: Very bad advice |
| The lowest risk-free rate |
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| Very bad advice |
| 06/16/25 4:12 PM EST | Behaviour |
| "A boy once asked Charlie Munger, 'What advice do you have for someone like me to succeed in life?' Munger replied: 'Don't do cocaine. Don't race trains to the track. And avoid all AIDS situations.'" |
| More Behaviour: The lowest risk-free rate |
| A price on mental freedom |
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| Good in theory |
| 06/16/25 4:10 PM EST | Economics |
| "Economics is not a perfect science. It describes relationships which are sometimes true, but can also change, sometimes permanently. For that reason, these models are useful to understand - but should never be taken as gospel." |
| More Economics: Dropping Economics 101 |
| 3-factor wealth |
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| No longer a serious country |
| 06/08/25 5:29 PM EST | World |
| "Imagine yourself as a foreigner considering investing in the United States. You may well know that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act contains a 'revenge' provision that would allow the U.S. government to impose extra taxes on foreign investors whose home countries have policies America doesn't like. You probably know that one of Trump's advisers has suggested the forced conversion of short-term debt into century bonds. Once upon a time everyone would have dismissed these things as stuff that couldn't happen in America. Now? Who knows?" |
| More World: Is South Korea the next Japan? |
| No exception |
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| The best withdrawal strategy in retirement |
| 06/08/25 5:26 PM EST | Retirement |
| "According to this report, only 1 in 7 retirees (14%) end up touching their principal during retirement. The rest live on their income (or less than their income) in their golden years. When I first read this statistic I couldn't believe it. The financial industry spends so much time and energy doing all this complicated math and planning on how to spend money in retirement and, yet, the vast majority of retirees ignore it." |
| More Retirement: Generational wealth vs. enough |
| Will you need long-term care? |
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| Missing the market's N best days |
| 06/08/25 5:16 PM EST | Asness |
| "I think the advice to avoid market timing is, for almost everyone, quite good. But the reason to avoid it is that you're likely bad at it and doing it without skill is actually harmful, as you are randomly deviating from a properly diversified portfolio. If you're convinced you're good enough at it, you should do some, but nowhere near the radical asymmetric strategy of being 100% out for only a few months or days. Even if (a giant if) an investor is really good at market timing, nobody is even a small fraction of that good (and why you'd do it by asymmetrically only getting out and never raising the weight perplexes me)." |
| More Asness: Old man yells at the cloud |
| Cliff Asness and three quant crises |
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| It's affordability |
| 06/08/25 5:12 PM EST | Markets |
| "While macro data may point to an economy that appears resilient - with moderate nominal growth, low unemployment, and steady consumer spending - beneath the surface, an affordability crisis is building. Though it may spare those with inflated assets, it is marginalizing and demoralizing a vital portion of the U.S. population." |
| More Markets: Drawdowns and recoveries |
| Buying the dip wins again |
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| Drawdowns and recoveries |
| 06/02/25 6:28 PM EST | Markets |
| "Long-term investors need to be aware of the pattern of drawdowns and be prepared to face them when they inevitably occur. The best investors and stocks suffer through large drawdowns, which can be considered a cost of doing business over the long haul. The median drawdown for the 6,500 stocks in our sample from 1985-2024 was 85 percent and took 2.5 years from peak to trough. More than one-half of all stocks never recover to their prior highs. Relative to smaller drawdowns, larger drawdowns, on average, take longer to occur, recover to the previous peak less often, and yet can provide attractive returns off the lows. Recoveries from drawdowns of all sizes have significant skewness, which means some stocks do extremely well relative to the pack. As a result, average returns from rebounds are higher than median returns." |
| More Markets: Buying the dip wins again |
| Profitability retrospective |
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| Generational wealth vs. enough |
| 06/02/25 6:26 PM EST | Retirement |
| "The concept of enough is perhaps best explained by Joseph Heller. Authors Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were at a party given by a hedge fund manager on a fancy island in New York. Vonnegut pointed out that the host had made more money in a single day than Heller had made with all of the sales of his popular book Catch-22 in his entire lifetime. Heller responded, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have"enough!' I'm pretty sure that speaker had never heard this story, or if he had, he thought, 'That's nuts, why would someone not want more?'" |
| More Retirement: Will you need long-term care? |
| Tasting retirement |
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| The lowest risk-free rate |
| 06/02/25 6:22 PM EST | Behaviour |
| "What is the lowest risk-free, after-tax, after-inflation rate of return you would accept in order to forgo all other investment opportunities for the rest of your life?" |
| More Behaviour: A price on mental freedom |
| Housel on the decline |
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| Is South Korea the next Japan? |
| 06/02/25 6:12 PM EST | World |
| "South Korea's equity market looks like an exaggerated version of the Japanese stock market. Japan has a massive pool of companies trading at below 1x price-to-book, but South Korea has an even larger share. And while Japan is famous for its “lost decades,” the Japanese market has taken a sharp upward turn, while the South Korean market continues to languish." |
| More World: No exception |
| Germans are reluctant to invest in stocks |
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| How flows change factor performance |
| 05/20/25 2:44 PM EST | Value Investing |
| "What I find particularly interesting, though, is that the study also estimates cross-factor impacts. If more money flows into momentum stocks, the expensive stocks tend to get more expensive while the cheap stocks tend to get cheaper. This should increase the return potential for value investors. Indeed, the chart below shows that if 1% of the total market flows into momentum portfolios, then the return outlook of the value factor increases but 0.6% per year. Similarly, the return outlook for small cap investors increases as well, while quality factor portfolios see their return prospects diminished because quality factor portfolios have large overlaps with momentum factor portfolios." |
| More Value Investing: US value trading at a discount |
| Just inside the zone |
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| A price on mental freedom |
| 05/20/25 2:43 PM ESY | Behaviour |
| "Today, I don't make active investments because you can't put a price on mental freedom. What I've realized about myself (and many others I've spoken to) is that when you buy an active investment like an individual stock, that investment consumes a lot of your attention." |
| More Behaviour: Housel on the decline |
| Don't push it |
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| Buying the dip wins again |
| 05/20/25 2:42 PM EST | Markets |
| "Retail investors have won again. When trade tensions flared in early April and about $6.6 trillion in market value vanished from US stocks in just two business days - the fifth-worst two-day drop since the S&P 500's creation in 1957 - they didn't panic. Instead, they did what they've learned to do over the past 15 years: They bought the dip. Six weeks later, the US stocks benchmark has not only recovered but surpassed its pre-tariff levels, delivering a gain of about 17% from the lows to those who kept their nerve." |
| More Markets: Profitability retrospective |
| Mr Market rules |
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