A number of bloggers in economics and the financial sector have risen to prominence through the sheer strength of their work. Note it was not their family connections nor ties to Ivy League schools or elite banks, but rather the strength of their research, analysis and writing.
Here is a dirty little secret: Stock-picking is wildly overrated. Sure, it makes for great cocktail party chatter, and what is more fun than delving into a company's new products? But the truth is that individual stocks are riskier than broad indices.
History shows us that people are terrible about guessing what is going to happen - next week, next month, and especially next year.
Any time you speak to people about their posture, you learn about their most recent investment activity. When someone just bought stocks, they tend to be bullish; someone who just sold is bearish.
The consumption and production of energy is a major component of the global economy.
How are the cabs in your city? In Manhattan, where I work, they are rather awful.
In New York, the former lack of real competition allowed taxis to extract excessive charges, regardless of the poor service.
The way we finance homes in this country is slow, filled with middlemen, who run a nonstandardized evaluation process. This makes financing a home cumbersome and difficult.
It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.
The ability to select stocks, manage them over time and know when to sell them is incredibly difficult, even for professional fund managers.
When it comes to investing, you are your own worst enemy.
Based on a lifetime of observations and a few decades in the markets, I understand that societies, beliefs and fashions all move in long arcs of time. We call these arcs several things: cycles, periods, eras.
Secular cycles are the long periods - as long as decades - that come to define each market era. These cycles alternate between long-term bull and bear markets.
Once you research an idea, you begin to develop a perspective. Writing about anything in public, often in real time, has helped fashion my views.
Anyone can make an article longer; the skill is keeping it tight and lean.
Content is king. When you are asking people to read you several times a day, you better have some fine content.
Mutual fund managers want your money in their funds. They get paid based on assets under management.
The electronics industry expanded rapidly and the seeds for the semiconductor and software revolution were planted. The postwar period also saw the suburbanization of America, the rise of the homeowner, the build-out of the interstate highway system, and the rise of automobile culture. Credit availability expanded dramatically.
Hedge fund managers charge so much more than mutual fund managers; alpha is even harder to come by. They end up selling a variety of things beyond mere outperformance.
TV producers want ratings and are willing to do nearly anything to get them. They gin up artificial conflicts and create an urgency for even the most minor of economic data points.
