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February 12, 2020

Best Financial Reads This Week – 11 Feb 2020

My favorite article this week shows how in the past 20 years or so, the age cohort of American CEOs hasn’t changed at all (i.e. baby boomers). Stay tuned next week for an explanation of why you shouldn’t own stock in the firm you work for!

The nuclear family was a mistake. David Brooks, The Atlantic. Fascinating.
The Boomer Blockade: How One Generation Reshaped the Workforce and Left Everyone Behind. Think Boundless. Since 2005, the age cohort of American CEOs hasn’t changed. Pretty weird, right? This has lots of implications for younger workers, and the article focuses on the economics of Gen X / Y / Millennials in contrast to the boomer generation. It occurred to me that there also might be some gender effects as well? It’s well-documented that women are extremely under-represented in C-suites. Is it possible that worker age dynamics are exacerbating workplace sexism? HT Tyler Cowen.
The Folly Of Bernie Sanders’ National Rent Control Proposal. CATO, Ryan Bourne.
The Modern Mind May Be 100,000 Years Old. Nautilus.
‘The intelligence coup of the century’: For decades, the CIA read the encrypted communications of allies and adversaries. Washington Post. Daaaang.

January 28, 2020

Tax Day Is Also Last-Minute IRA Contribution Day

Most people know that April 15th is the deadline for tax returns. But it’s also an important deadline for your retirement savings. April 15th is also the deadline for contributing to your previous year’s IRA contribution limit. This can have important consequences for your retirement savings.

December 5, 2019

Reading List – 5 December 2019

Great example of status quo bias in an article about the flu this week. And EU privacy laws are helping a murderer wipe his history from Google. Fun stuff!

The “Right to be Forgotten” doubles back and shoots the shark. Volokh Conspiracy. Wow! So now EU privacy laws are responsible for something even worse than cookie popups everywhere.
Why doesn’t the flu freak us out more? Futurity. File this one under “Cognitive Biases: Status Quo Bias”. Same reason why people aren’t deathly afraid of riding in cars.
Trump Didn’t Shrink U.S. Military Commitments Abroad—He Expanded Them. Foreign Affairs. In my private life I’ve frequently tempered my criticism of President Trump by saying something along the lines of, “But I like that he’s bringing troops home.” I guess that’s just a myth?
Big Calculator: How Texas Instruments Monopolized Math Class. Medium. Isn’t this supposed to be impossible in a market economy? What prevents competition here?
How Not To Die. Paul Graham. Personally inspirational.

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=511527

November 27, 2019

I Ran A Marathon! Also, Here’s How to Read a Prospectus

I ran the Philly Marathon this past Sunday! It was my first, and I definitely didn’t run it fast, but I finished. I wasn’t a fan of the rain and snow at the end though. Anyway, back to business…

Many investors that I speak with have their savings invested in a combination of mutual funds. Usually, owned through tax-advantaged accounts like 401k’s and IRAs. This is a good way to invest, although I often notice investors don’t know what fees they are paying. This is an intentional feature of the mutual fund market, unfortunately. Mutual fund providers must provide certain cost information in a prospectus, but many providers intentionally make this information inaccessible.

November 14, 2019

Reading List – 14 November 2019

The most important financial news of the past two weeks is that scientists have discovered that Jackson Pollock’s technique cleverly avoided a characteristic of fluid dynamics that leads to unwanted curly tails on paint pourings. Finance!

Source: Plos One. Pollock avoided hydrodynamic instabilities to paint with his dripping technique.
Bernardo Palacios, Alfonso Rosario, Monica M. Wilhelmus, Sandra Zetina, Roberto Zenit.

Pollock paintings avoid a curly physics problem. futurity.com.
You silly, silly people. Tyler Cowen. Politics… don’t matter.
The Myth of the Nazi War Machine. Notes on Liberty.
Lindsey Graham keeps moving the goalposts to downplay Trump’s Ukraine dealings. Vox. I think a lot of the drama that has unfolded with the Trump administration was fairly predictable in 2016, but one thing that has surprised me is the absolute downfall of Sen. Lindsey Graham as a serious person.
Stab a Book, the Book Won’t Die. Craigmod.
Immediate brain plasticity after one hour of brain–computer interface. Journal of Physiology. Brains are so, so cool.
It’s Time to Take Down the Mona Lisa. NY Times.
How to Steal a Billion. Oversharing. In the future, it will be good to think back and remember the WeWork saga whenever a financial guy in a suit is trying to tell you he has a special understanding of the marketplace.

November 6, 2019

You Can’t Beat the Market and You Should Stop Trying

Here are some common questions I get asked as a financial adviser. What’s your system? What’s your investment strategy? Do you focus on market timing or relative value? How do you plan to outperform the market?

These questions are natural. Investors want to understand what advisers are doing with their money. But in a way, these questions demonstrate a lot of the misconceptions about what exactly counts as success in retirement saving.

You shouldn’t try to beat the market. Instead, investors should actually aspire to equaling the market return. Let’s take a look at why.

October 30, 2019

Extra Spooky Reading List – 30 October 2019

OK fine, this reading list is not spooky. But it’s still really good. Google posts a 23% decline in profit! And a very interesting piece by Tyler Cowen on the game theory dynamic going on between President Trump and Senator McConnell. Lots of aspects I hadn’t thought about at all.

Colonel Vindman at President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration

Republicans Accuse Colonel Vindman, a Jew Who Fled Soviet Persecution, of Dual Loyalty. The Intercept. Pretty shocking. Dude moved here when he was 3 and grew up in Brooklyn.
I am no longer a Republican. Greg Mankiw.
Why are Jamaicans the fastest runners in the world? Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution.
Trump’s Conviction Is More Likely Than It Appears. Tyler Cowen again. Interesting take on the game theory of the impeachment process. Lots of factors I hadn’t considered.
Google, in Rare Stumble, Posts 23% Decline in Profit. NY Times.
How “special register groups” invaded computer dictionaries for decades. Ken Shirriff. Usually authoritative information can be trusted. Sometimes it can’t.
Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free. ProPublica.
Still Manufacturing Consent: An Interview With Noam Chomsky. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.

Don’t miss any new posts! Sign up below to subscribe. I generally post once per month and I alternate between longer-form articles and short digests of interesting financial content from other sites I’ve found. Thanks for reading!

October 16, 2019

Wednesday Reading List – 16 October 2019

Two articles this week on how investing is hard– one about why rich people are bad at it and one about how everyone is bad it. Fun!

Investing for the Elite. Barry Ritholtz. Wealthy people don’t always know how to invest either.
Math Work. XKCD. I love this comic but this particular strip is a favorite. I’ve noticed many times in my life that “bad at math” people severely overestimate how easily math stuff comes to “good at math” people. Embrace the frustration!
Abandoning a Cat. Haruki Murakami. New Yorker.
Why Is Middle School So Hard for So Many People? The Atlantic.
Day Trading for a Living? SSRN. If you think you can do it, you’re wrong.
Looking back at the Snowden revelations. Matthew Green, Cryptography Engineering.

October 7, 2019

What Are Repo Rates and Why Are They Messed Up?

Two weeks ago, something weird happened in the lending markets that businesses and banks use to shuffle their spending money around. A sharp increase in repo rates resulted in the Federal Reserve conducting its first major intervention in short term lending markets since the 2008 credit crisis.

September 25, 2019

Wednesday Reading List – 25 September 2019

An extra long list this week to catch up after Hurricane Dorian. Favorite quote this week: “Thus, accumulating evidence shows that over-representation of males in STEM fields is perhaps better framed as under-representation of males in reading fields and the latter is driven by relatively low reading achievement among males.”

Circumstances in Which I Will Not Pet Your Dog. New Yorker. Yep, pretty much.
Girls’ comparative advantage in reading can largely explain the gender gap in math-related fields. Marginal Revolution. Evidence that the gender gap in math/science is primarily caused by boys being terrible at reading in school.
Active Learning Works But Students Don’t Like It. Marginal Revolution, again.
The American Working Man Still Isn’t Working. Foreign Affairs. I was quite shocked by the fact that 13.7% of men age 25-54 are not working, up from 12.8% in 2007.
Greta Thunberg Is the Anti-Trump. New Yorker. When I was sixteen I mostly played Mortal Kombat Trilogy all day after school. Inspiring!
A crack just emerged in the financial markets: The NY Fed spends $53 billion to rescue the overnight lending market. CNN Business. Odd.
A Lunar Space Elevator Is Actually Feasible & Inexpensive, Scientists Find. Observer. Science is so cool.
Physicists Finally Nail the Proton’s Size, and Hope Dies. Quanta Magazine. Even when science is kind of boring, it’s still so cool.
The boring technology behind a one-person internet company. Wenbin Fang, ListenNotes. Not investment-related at all, but I loved this article and found it encouraging as a fellow one-person internet company.