"Three ways to get paid for your words:
1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to and you’ll go broke. ”

If 90% of your money is in traditional risk assets, one should view the 10% in alternatives as insurance, as something which you expect to be a cost most years. There will come a time when a pure passive portfolio will be riskier that any other portfolio composition.

Recently I heard Scott Galloway of NYU Stern, say that "it's better to concentrate on something you are good at and then develop a passion for it". 

Other ideas include setting up auto deductions from your income account to your savings account or some form of digital wealth advisor account.

Investors know that buying high and selling low isn’t a good strategy. Unfortunately however, destructive behaviour often leads to investors under-performing the very funds in which they invest.

Humans have evolved over time to avoid discomfort, so when we encounter issues that we disagree with it’s much easier to simply ignore them or classify them as being wrong without putting too much thought, effort or reasoning into it

Hit the replay button...button always worth being reminded about .......highlights from Buffett’s 2017 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.

(1) On preparing for ‘rainy days’ (2) On handling a crisis (3) On share repurchases

These funds are dealing with a group dynamic.- Institutional funds have board members, investment committees, consultants, money managers, regulators, beneficiaries and others all vying for attention. It can be extremely difficult to make wise decisions within a group construct where you have competing egos and goals.

Millennials use low-cost ETF's more than any other age group and that usage increased 60 percent during the past three years. As well when it comes to their core assets, they like them to come cheap.

As Peter Lynch said “Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.” 

As investors we would should spend less time thinking about the perfect portfolio and trying to avoid bear markets, and more time thinking about why they’re investing in the first place.

Robo-advisors are programs run by algorithms that automatically invest your money in funds or stocks based on your goals and tolerance for risk.

One benefit of robo-advisors is that they remove human bias. There's no sales person trying to put you into an investment for which they receive a commission. However even with the best intentions a financial advisor will get it wrong (of course, so does the algorithm, although that's not supposed to happen). 

The difference is ‘information’. And knowledge. They are what tells us how to build a nuclear power plant…or make ice cream. Information is also critical to an economy. How many ice cream parlours do we need…how much steel should we produce…how do you make a hit TV show? An economy is a learning system. The participants learn every day.

A majority of small investors performance can be summed up only one way…most are very poor investors. The reason? Risk aversion and herding, plus the fear of losing money and investors’ tendencies to follow the crowd. There is a mountain of research that  proves that these are the biggest death traps for investors.

This big difference between the younger generation compared to those before them is the expectation that all pertinent information is not only disclosed, but easily accessible. We’ve gone from an age where investors didn’t know how much profit a company earned to being able to look up a company’s employees on LinkedIn to see where they went to college.

Investing is tricky at the best of times and I can’t imagine trying to invest without a well-designed process in place to guide our actions. There is always an environment that’s ripe for mistakes driven by fear, greed, and overreactions. Those investors who are able to ignore these emotional responses and stick to their process will have a much higher probability of success than those who do not.

Reversing a strong opinion already expressed makes us uncomfortable. It is a tacit acknowledgement that we were previously wrong about something. Sometimes an idea or investment will go against you. Were you wrong or just early? The real question is 'can you back off".

"There’s a huge argument for not smoking under any circumstances, but there are still some people doing it. Also we know that gambling is designed to entertain people enough so they won’t mind losing 10 or 20% of their money on every spin. People are not actually gambling, they’re gradually losing money."

Everyone wants to make hedge funds an asset class. It’s not. It’s a fund structure. There are so many different types of hedge funds that it’s becoming difficult to keep track. The options and combinations are nearly endless.

It is so ironic that many allocators have never traded therefore do not have the necessary expertise to build and maintain a viable hedge fund allocation. 

In my mind there are few more important lessons than this.
“If you understand compound interest, you basically understand the universe.”

Who would have thought the first step to becoming Master of the Universe would be to understand how to properly use a credit card?

The institutional economists are the media’s go-to people whenever a market or economic commentary is required. In spite of their pretty average (disappointing) track records, they project credibility. The name of the game is to not do, or say, anything that spooks investors or potential investors.