A recommendation for a podcast caught my eye recently because it hinted that there was some interesting discussion of Nortel. It turned out that the Nortel discussion wasn’t interesting at all, but I did have a strong reaction to the rest of the podcast. The three speakers went on for about an hour on a wide range of active investing topics, and all I could think was that I can’t believe I wasted a decade of my life on this crap. It’s one thing to have a hobby that contributes to an otherwise balanced life, but it’s another to devote a huge proportion of your waking hours to such a societally useless pursuit. If these three guys had chosen to plant trees instead of pick stocks, the world would be a slightly better place. It would be fantastic if investors woke up and stopped paying huge amounts for portfolio management. This would eliminate the incentive for so many brilliant young minds to waste their lives on useless pursuits.

My only post in the past two weeks is a review of a book dedicated to Charlie Munger’s wisdom: Poor Charlie’s Almanack Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Mr. Money Mustache explains some of the values of the FIRE movement. The Blunt Bean Counter explains the basics of RRIFs clearly. The most intriguing part of this guest post comes at the end: “RRIFs can be used in a surprising number of ways.” It would be good to learn some of those ways. John Robertson uses the closing of Planswell as a check to see how investor assets are protected from a robo-advisor’s failure.

Most people have heard of the great investor Warren Buffett, but fewer have heard of his long-time business partner Charlie Munger. Charlie’s approach to understanding the world is laid out in Poor Charlie’s Almanack , a long, but interesting, book edited by Peter D. Kaufman. This book covers such a wide array of topics that it resists summary. To this reader, Munger’s biggest ideas are 1) that we should understand the biggest and most useful ideas from a broad range of fields, and 2) that we should understand the many ways that our psychology gets in the way of drawing sensible conclusions. Whether we agree or disagree with Munger’s ideas, I found a great many worth thinking about. I’ll list a few here as an enticement to reading the book. Munger is known for challenging and often abandoning his best-loved ideas: “a thing not worth doing is not worth doing well.” It may not be a good idea to change your mind too often, but we have to be open to the possibility that our ideas...

Here are my posts for the past two weeks: Now We Know What Followed the Lost Decade for Stocks The Clash of the Cultures Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: The Rational Reminder Podcast looks at the future of ETFs in a very interesting interview with Dave Nadig, founder of etf.com. Nadig also has some pragmatic ideas for how to pay for financial advice. Robb Engen at Boomer and Echo says Canadians have an income problem, not a debt problem. This is undoubtedly true for some people. However, there are others who are going to outspend whatever income they get. The question in my mind is how is viewing the problem this way going to help? Probably the biggest effect is that it allows people with big debts to decide the problem is someone else’s fault. This is more likely to trigger giving up than solving anything. On the positive side, it might spur some people to seek higher income. I find the change in expectations since I was a young adult interestin...

John C. Bogle was passionate about helping average investors get their fair share of the wealth produced by the stock market. In his book The Clash of the Cultures , he describes what is wrong with our financial system and what should be done to fix it. Unlike many who shout complaints from the sidelines, Bogle devoted his career to fighting for necessary change. When it comes to those who invest other people’s money, Bogle “observed firsthand the crowding-out of the traditional and prudent culture of long-term investing by a new and aggressive culture of short-term speculation.” Bogle devotes much of the book to the history of mutual funds to make his points. Most modern mutual funds have a “double-agency” problem where managers have to serve both the fund investors and the shareholders of the management company. Sadly, investors lose out on the conflicts of interest; management companies can only make money by dipping into investor assets. Stewardship has given way to salesm...

A decade ago I wrote about the lost decade for stocks from 1999 to 2008 when the S&P 500 total return failed to keep up with inflation. Since the depression, this also happened in periods that ended in 1947 and 1983. At the time I wondered what happened in the decades after these lost decades. Here were the answers: 1948 to 1957: 14.4% per year above inflation 1984 to 1993: 10.7% per year above inflation At the time I wrote “As you can see, those first two decades were spectacular! There is no guarantee that the upcoming decade will match these impressive results, but it does give us some hope.” The results are now in: 2009 to 2018: 11.4% per year above inflation This is in line with previous results, but is more than I could have hoped 10 years ago. S&P 500 stocks have nearly tripled in real terms (above inflation). Those who give up on stocks after weak periods pay a high price.