A Wealth of Common Sense. Investor, author, and host of Animal Spirits podcast, focuses on simplifying finance for everyone; has backed over 200 companies.
These were the total returns on a year-to-date basis as of April 8, 2025:
S&P 500 -15.0%
Nasdaq 100 -18.5%
Russell 2000 -20.7%
MSCI EAFE -3.5%
MSCI Emerging Markets -7.8%
That wasn’t very much fun.
Now here are the 2025 year-to-date gains through the close on Monday:
S&P 500 +17.9%
Nasdaq 100 +23.3%
Russell 2000 +14.2%
MSCI EAFE +28.8%
MSCI Emerging Markets +34.5%
That’s much better.
Here’s a...
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On today’s show, we discuss:
Shifting Landscapes and Silver Linings
Three interconnected themes: economic nationalism, fiscal activism and corporate investment; AI innovation and adoption
Diversifying the diversifiers with alternatives, the 60/40 Plus portfolio...
The recession during the onset of the pandemic was the worst quarterly GDP decline since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate shot up from less than 4% to more than 14% in one month.
But this doesn’t count as a true recession.
We shut off the economy like a light switch but then turned it back on. Plus the government sent out trillions of dollars in aid to households, businesses and states. Unemployment insur...
The New York Times wrote a story in 1929 that’s fascinating to read with the benefit of hindsight:
Some highlights as the Roaring 20s kicked into overdrive:
Despite setbacks, the brokers’ wires again become clogged with orders for stocks from all parts of the country, tips fly about freely, violent advances and declines in leading issues are of daily occurrence.
It is quite true that the people who know least...
We also discussed questions about how to die with zero, how diversification works in practice, the Dave Ramsey portfolio and when to make your 529 account more diversified and conservative.
Further Reading:
When Buy-and-Hold Dies
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