Thoughts

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Connoisseur Investors

As a lover of good wine, I understand the attraction towards the most prestigious brands. Petrus, Romanée-Conti, Château Margaux, Sassicaia, Opus One, etc. Not only do these producers have a history of making great wine,

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Why Investors Cannot Outperform Benchmarks

I wrote this five years ago on Medium, but I have some new comments below. https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/why-investors-cannot-outperform-simple-benchmarks-d6a587a54967 So many people are focused on fees, liquidity and strategy transparency. Well, everyone can access their beloved index funds at

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Know Your Patients

Today, it’s all about scaling — raising a lot of money, managing a lot of money, growing the business every quarter and increasing the bottom line. It’s not conducive to putting the customer, investor or

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Reliable is Cool

We all love more features, more customization, more of the bells and whistles. We get bored with tried-and-true. We crave the new-and-improved even if it means taking on more risk. Opening the present becomes more

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Too Many Metrics

I don’t have performance-standards for my trading. No goals for annualized growth figures or anything like that. That’s a recipe for stress and failure. I simply start with “how much am I willing to lose?”.

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Excess Gets Washed Away

Forest fires clear the way for new growth. Storms remove stale air out of a region. Predators cull the weak, which helps control overpopulation. Bear markets purge greedy speculators and those that gather an abundance

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Medicating the Chaos

Deep down, we all know cycles are natural and something to expect when playing the markets. Stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, investment strategies — hell, everything in the cosmos — experiences cycles. Some cycles flow calmly

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Research is Overrated

This weekend I was speaking with a young trader and a question about research inevitably came up. “What research are you working on to maintain your edge in the markets?” My answer: Following your system

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Distaste for Waste

Most people gather too much sludge in their portfolios. They start out with a few mutual funds and ETFs then, before they know it, a couple dozen stocks make their way in too. Where did

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Ditch the Script

The answer to what the markets will do cannot be found in multiple choice answers A through D. The question to ask is not “what will the markets do over the next 12-24 months?”, but

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How’s Your Resolution Going?

As an avid sports fan my entire life, I’ve seen many great players never win the big one. Hell, I’ve seen many teams comprised of great players never win the big one. The in-fighting. Backstabbing.

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Volatility by Design

The past couple of months have been tough on trend-followers, myself included. The sharp reversals in interest rates, equities and currencies accounted for most of the losses. While the very recent performance has been painful,

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Where Do Trends Come From?

The answer doesn’t matter as much as much as actually being open to receiving them. We must be attentive and always adjusting the dial to sync up with them. One instance of missing out on

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It’s Not If, But When

In 2005, Warren and Pam Adams lost their home during Hurricane Rita. Instead of feeling sorry for themselves, they decided to protect themselves from the next storm. They moved to Gilchrist, TX and built their

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Constraints are Liberating

Rules free you from entertaining distractions. They keep you in your lane. You always know what to do. You may not like what the rules are telling you, but at least you have the peace

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Collect. Don’t Hoard.

Media and technology afford us the ability to gather ideas and act on them very cheaply these days. We’re constantly bombarded with people selling their ideas. Whether it’s CNBC, Bloomberg, Barrons, WSJ, Twitter accounts, Motley

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