| Special treatment for SpaceX |
| 04/30/26 | | Indexing |
"We already have a major index with a very short seasoning period. The CRSP total stock market index, used by Vanguard funds, has a seasoning period of five days in some cases. According to Murray and Sammon (2026), this practice produces bad outcomes for index investors. Prices rise prior to inclusion and then fall subsequently; index investors are forced to buy at high prices on day five. They find that in the months following inclusion, prices fall by as much as 10% due to the short seasoning period."
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| The skip-month mystery |
| 04/30/26 | | Momentum Investing |
"By contrast, the 12-0 strategy (which includes the recent month) produced more stable returns across market regimes. This stability came from incorporating the most recent month's information directly into portfolio formation, which appeared to smooth out extreme reactions to prior-month conditions. In addition, the 12â€"0 portfolio slightly surpassed the 12â€"1 portfolio in the full sample."
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| Long-term money |
| 04/30/26 | | History |
"What's common to miss here is that when one generation's life becomes comparatively easier than before, their life does not become objectively easy; they just move on to worrying about higher-order problems that were previously deemed not urgent enough to worry about."
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| U.S. housing starting to crash |
| 04/30/26 | | Real Estate |
"Analysis from Residential Club shows that 75% of the largest metro areas in the U.S. saw inflation-adjusted home price declines over the last year. But will this trend continue? And what might we expect from U.S. housing over the next few years? Let's dig in."
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| Positive correlation a terrible reason to add risk |
| 04/30/26 | | Asness |
"we generally like bonds as part of an overall portfolio, even with recently higher correlations. There's little else out there that performs as consistently-well during recessions and related environments of falling growth. But if you want to sell bonds and improve the diversification of your portfolio, the leading candidates should be things that are diversifying to equity risk (and ideally to bonds, too, though far less important as, again, bonds don't impact traditional portfolios nearly as much as equities do)."
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| Name changes as a bubble symptom |
| 04/30/26 | | Markets |
"Are we currently in a stock market bubble? I doubt it, because I have yet to see a change in major indicators such as issuance behavior. But the minor indicators have been piling up over the past two years, including the success of retail investors, the rise of brokerage stocks, and various violations of the law of one price. The market is getting frothy, at least at its fringes if not in its core."
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| The logic of NACHO |
| 04/30/26 | | World |
"On Wall Street, TACO - Trump Always Chickens Out - has abruptly been replaced as a favorite meme by NACHO - Not a Chance Hormuz Opens. As a result, oil futures have soared."
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| America's geriatric stock market |
| 03/30/26 | | Markets |
"America is aging. The median age of U.S. residents increased from 30 years in 1980 to 39 years in 2024. Oddly enough, this trend in America's human population is mirrored in America's equity population. By some measures, the age of the U.S. stock market is near all-time highs."
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| No permanent underclass |
| 03/30/26 | | Tech |
"Cornelius Vanderbilt was born poor, yet became the richest man on Earth. Nevertheless, even that fortune didn't last more than a few generations. The dominant industry of Vanderbilt's time (railroads) gave way to others that overtook it. This simple example illustrates how even those in the current AI-elite will eventually lose their fortune in one way or another."
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| Would you rather |
| 03/30/26 | | Markets |
"Instead of playing this investment game of Would You Rather and choosing between increasingly unattractive options, we have the ability and willingness to sit this one out. For those who feel compelled to remain fully invested in stocks, the risks of profit and valuation normalization are, in our view, very real. At this stage of the cycle, we believe the opportunity cost of patience is far lower than the risk of permanent capital impairment. In fact, when valuations have reached these levels in the past, equities have fallen as much as 50%. A similar decline today would simply bring valuations back to historical averages."
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| Sanity check |
| 03/30/26 | | Markets |
"It seems the market is going crazy, as usual. So I decided to do something I haven't done in a while; look at the Dow 30 stocks and their P/E ratios one at a time. Averages often don't always tell the whole story, but looking at a list of individual stocks can give you an idea of what's going on. "
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| Going on in privates |
| 03/30/26 | | Asness |
"it's nice to be complimented, but I did not call anything short term, including the current troubles. I stand by my observations long term, but the long term takes a while (it's in the name). This short term could turn into something ugly or turn out to be a few lonely cockroaches not auguring anything traumatic."
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| Treason in the futures markets |
| 03/30/26 | | Government |
"There's a broader lesson here: You can't trust a corrupt government to protect national security. And our government is now utterly corrupt: It's hard to find a single senior official, from the president on down, who treats public office as a grave responsibility rather than an opportunity for personal self-aggrandizement and profit. Among other things, deeply corrupt governments tend to be very bad at waging war, no matter how much they may exalt 'warrior ethos' and 'lethality.'"
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| The Impotence of Drill, Baby, Drill |
| 03/14/26 | | World |
"So US prices of gasoline and other oil products reflect world crude prices, and the fact that America produces a lot of oil doesn't matter at all. If anything, US families are more exposed to Middle East chaos than their counterparts in, say, Europe or Japan, mainly because we drive bigger, less fuel-efficient cars."
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| Lessons from historic oil spikes |
| 03/14/26 | | Markets |
"we can see that volatility and value factors tend to perform better while momentum tends to perform worse. On average, volatility performs about 1.2% better while value performs about 40bps better. And momentum performs about 60bps worse than average."
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| Waiting for the IPO wave |
| 03/14/26 | | Markets |
"Stock market bubbles are often heralded by specific IPOs which mark their beginning and not necessarily their end. For the Japanese stock market bubble, the NTT IPO of February 1987 seemed to trigger a retail investor mania; the bubble did not burst until early 1990. For the tech stock bubble, the Netscape IPO of August 1995 was a watershed event; the market peaked more than four years later. So, if we do see an IPO wave in 2026/2027, hang on to your hat. But right now, while there's a lot going on in the U.S. stock market, the lack of issuance tells me we are not yet in a stock market bubble."
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| Einstein's layoffs |
| 03/14/26 | | Economics |
"Well, here in 2026, the really impressive new advancement has arrived, and Shiller's toxic narrative is spreading as predicted. It's not important whether this narrative is true, what's important is that it is believed by consumers. If low consumer confidence leads to reduced spending, the narrative can have real economic impact. And even if consumers don't actually believe the narrative, stock prices could decline if investors believe that consumers believe the narrative."
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| The Globe's Dividend All-Stars |
| 02/21/26 | | Stingy Investing |
"Investing in Canadian dividend stocks has been a great way to build wealth and the Globe's Dividend All-Stars provides a guide to the largest 200 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It includes a plethora of data on each stock along with a star rating. The top 20 get a full five out of five stars and a spot in the Dividend All-Stars portfolio. We're pleased to say the portfolio handily beat the market since its last update with gains of 41.4 per cent" [$]
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| Talking about bubbles |
| 02/21/26 | | Markets |
"Centuries of financial history show that the opposite is true: When everybody's asking about a bubble, that's a strong sign that a bubble is indeed occurring. Bubbles are not a secret to the people experiencing them."
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| AI and the stock market |
| 02/21/26 | | Markets |
"I've previously argued that the stock market is not in an AI bubble. But that doesn't mean that everything is sunshine and rainbows. I view today's stock market as having both unusually large upside and unusually large downside. In this piece, I want to sketch out the worst-case scenario for global equities."
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| Fear of missing out on global catastrophe |
| 02/21/26 | | Markets |
"In recent months, gold and silver have exhibited incredible price volatility. Why? Because they've transformed from boring commodities traded by professionals into exciting gambling instruments traded by retail investors. Forget meme stocks, we've entered the age of meme metals."
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| Weaponized risk models |
| 02/21/26 | | Markets |
"For most investors, risk management conjures images of risk-averse, neurotic bureaucrats. But that image is out of date. Today, risk models have become the key weapon in the arsenal of the apex predators of the hedge fund world. For pod shops and quant funds, they are the central nexus through which capital allocation is coordinated across strategies, assets, and asset classes."
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| The inverted yield curve |
| 02/02/26 | | Bonds |
"So what the dog's silence is telling us is that the world has changed. Anchoring has created space for the Fed to avoid using unemployment to contain inflation. Of course, the real world is not the same as a macroeconomic model, which is just a tool to help clarify our thoughts and understand the logic of the system. The Fed probably did not plan on a painless response to the Covid inflation spike, and in fact from their projections it is clear that they did expect their interest rate hikes to raise the unemployment rate along Taylor Rule lines. Fortunately for millions of working people, they miscalculated."
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| International financial anarchy |
| 02/02/26 | | World |
"Goldbugs are thus right about gold's durable safe-haven status, but they're not right that this is a good thing. Gold isn't a superior system - it's a desperate fallback for a world in which the people who were in charge of the superior system abdicated their duties."
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| Value is simply dormant |
| 02/02/26 | | Value Investing |
"Value investing is dead. Value investing remains dead. And we have killed it. After years in what can be now called one of the worst (if not the worst) period for value investing, many investors have packed their bags and called it quits. Their claim? This time is different."
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| Trillionaire |
| 02/02/26 | | Markets |
"Thus, whoever becomes history's first trillionaire has two very different Johns to follow as role models: the flamboyant John Law or the methodical John D. Rockefeller. Follow Law, and you'll have some thrills, but you'll die penniless at age 57 in a foreign land. Follow Rockefeller, and you'll have celery instead of thrills, but you'll die a respected philanthropist at age 97, your name living on in history (for example in 30 Rock)."
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| Robinhood and other circularities |
| 02/02/26 | | Markets |
"How can we explain the phenomenon that customers of broker XYZ buy XYZ shares? One explanation is familiarity bias. A large academic literature shows that investors tend to buy what they know"
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| The Case for Getting Bored |
| 02/02/26 | | Markets |
"High-beta stocks tend to capture the imagination on the way up, but they have captured significantly more of the pain on the way down. By losing less during market corrections, lower volatility stocks often don't need to work as hard to get back to even. You capture a material portion of the upside with less of the pain."
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| Things I'm pretty sure about |
| 01/19/26 | | Behaviour |
"Most harm done to others is unintentional. I think the vast majority of people are good and well-meaning, but in a competitive and stressful world it's easy to ignore how your actions affect others."
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| Stocks, bubbles, and market myths |
| 01/19/26 | | Markets |
"Bubbles are typically driven by excessive leveraging, but current debt growth remains a fraction of what was seen in the 1995â€"2000 era. Debt was essentially flat for five years, with only a 9% increase in 2025."
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| Gold isn't special |
| 01/19/26 | | Markets |
"A final reason that gold has been rising is because it's been rising. There is a momentum factor, in other words. As investors watched gold climb the leaderboard last year, those gains attracted other investors, which created further upward pressure on prices."
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| Doody calls central banking |
| 01/19/26 | | Government |
"We won't remember Powell as an effective protector of our purchasing power. Instead, we'll remember him as the chairman who kept the Everything Bubble inflated - aggressively expanding the Fed's balance sheet, driving record-high asset prices, fueling wealth inequality, creating an affordability crisis, and leaving a government increasingly dependent on the Fed to finance its debt. By constantly pivoting and cleaning up, we believe Powell has left his successor with a monumental mess."
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| The tyranny of the complainers |
| 01/19/26 | | Behaviour |
"it's clear that a single individual often accounts for 10-30% of all complaints! These complaints have to be investigated so this single individual may be costing taxpayers millions. It's as if a single individual were pulling a fire alarm thousands of times a year, mobilizing emergency services on demand, and never facing repercussions. Does this strategy work? Probably."
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| It really is a bad idea |
| 01/19/26 | | Behaviour |
"There are all kinds of rules against dating at the workplace, and in general, it is good advice not to date at the workplace because these relationships rarely end well and can cause all kinds of harm to the people caught in them. Luckily, I tend to wave at good advice while I let it pass me because if I had heeded it, I wouldn't be married to the fantastic lady that I have been with for the last two decades."
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| Asset Mixer Update |
| 01/19/26 | | Stingy Investing |
We've updated our Asset Mixer to include real return data for 2025.
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| Periodic Table Update |
| 01/19/26 | | Stingy Investing |
We've updated our periodic table of annual returns for Canadians to include real return data for 2025.
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| The rise of ETF slop |
| 01/11/26 | | Funds |
"Many of the ETFs being launched today have been engineered to attract assets rather than improve outcomes for investors. I think what we are seeing is best described as ETF slop." [video]
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| Fourth quarter effect in small caps |
| 01/11/26 | | Markets |
"The authors document that analyst earnings estimates do not adjust for this fourth-quarter effect, indicating that they are not aware that it exists. As a result, an unusually high share of companies misses analyst expectations in the fourth quarter compared to other quarters. Luckily, though, these missed expectations don't seem to matter as much as they did during other quarters."
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| Advancements in self-driving cars |
| 01/11/26 | | Tech |
"Even if the rest of AI doesn't prove that disruptive soon, self-driving will change quite a lot wherever it is allowed to proceed. I too am unreasonably excited."
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| Last advice from Jonathan Clements |
| 01/10/26 | | Retirement |
"Parting advice from cherished personal finance columnist Jonathan Clements. The final actions he took battling terminal cancer." [video]
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| Asset Mixer Update |
| 01/10/26 | | Stingy Investing |
We've updated our Asset Mixer to include nominal return data for 2025.
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| Periodic Table Update |
| 01/10/26 | | Stingy Investing |
We've updated our periodic table of annual returns for Canadians to include nominal return data for 2025.
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| The Globe 250 for 2025 |
| 01/01/26 | | Stingy Investing |
"The Megastar portfolio jumped 39.4 per cent from Dec. 11, 2024, to Dec. 10, 2025, and beat the Canadian stock market (as represented by the S&P/TSX Composite Index), which climbed 26.1 per cent over the same period. The jolly returns added to those from prior years, with the Megastar portfolio climbing at an average annual rate of 33.3 per cent from Dec. 1, 2022, to Dec. 10, 2025, while the market advanced at an annual rate of 18.9 per cent over the same period."
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| The Megastars for 2025 |
| 01/01/26 | | Stingy Investing |
"Our new Megastar ranking of Canada's largest publicly traded companies evaluates each major stock on the Toronto Stock Exchange and awards two star ratings - one for the stock's appeal to value investors and the other for its allure to momentum investors. We then focused on the 20 stocks with the best blend of value and momentum characteristics, which form our Megastar team."
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