Waylon Jennings can teach you a lot about being a successful investor. The most important part of Jennings’ success was his go-it-alone, do it himself strategy. Jennings didn’t attempt to sound like anyone else, he charted a musical course that was unique to him. He avoided the herd, and made his own decisions. That’s how I want you to invest. In March 1995, I wrote of Waylon and his success: “Well, I Nearly Got Caught at a Burger King.” “And a couple of times on a plane./I thought I was safe from detection with all of the weight I had gained./But walking around in a jumpsuit—that didn’t … [Read more...]

The NFL has a lot in common with investing. Both can be rough sports. You can get beaten if you’re not at the top of your game. That’s why a methodical approach is necessary to win both on the field and in the markets. Back in 2002 I wrote about the inspiration former Cleveland Brown’s football coach Paul Brown has given me during my years of investing. Read on about how Brown used a focused, methodical approach to build a football dynasty. Former Cleveland Brown’s coach, the legendary Paul Brown, was a full professor. And Professor Brown taught his football players a systematical/methodical … [Read more...]

I couldn’t help but laugh to myself recently when I read an article in a major business publication about banks selling structured notes linked to FAANG stocks. The only thing more complicated than an explanation of the business case for some of these tech stocks is a structured note based on their performance. It’s the opposite of my small-town Vermont axiom “Simple is Sophisticated.” Any investment plan you make should work hard to eschew the use of such exotic investment products (they’re called products because they are sold to consumers). Instead you should focus on an investment plan … [Read more...]

Many investment gurus, panelists, and wunderkinds attempt to prove, day in and day out, that they are smarter than the market. Often they suggest that if you simply buy when they buy, and sell when they sell, you will have investment success. But reality is that most of the time, such market timing behavior leads investors into playing a losing game of catch up. They often end up chasing the market and buying near the high, then selling near the low for the same reason. In 1992 I warned readers about the dangers of trying to outguess the market. I wrote: How many investors are lucky enough … [Read more...]

History has a way of repeating itself. In early 1995 I wrote about a math professor named Tom Nicely, who worked at Lynchburg College. Nicely was examining prime numbers using a group of five personal computers. While four of the computers gave Nicely the correct answer to a problem, 1.2126596294086, the fifth turned up a slightly different answer, 1.212659624891157804. The cause of the fifth computer’s error was the Intel Pentium processor installed on it. Nicely called Intel to explain, but was given the cold shoulder. Next, he did something which at that point was still novel, he asked … [Read more...]