Let’s stay on the subject of making sure you get paid in times of trouble no matter what, just like Tony Soprano. Because any time you invest, you’re using your own money to create interest, dividends, or rent, and preferably all three. I’m not interested in price increases and selling assets. I want you to think like an owner of a multitude of assets. I remember my dad telling me how, as a teenager, he would collect for his dad’s rental properties. Some of them were in rougher neighborhoods, and his dad would tell him: “You stand to the side of the door when you knock. You never know … [Read more...]

Action Line: Central banks the world over talk about “soft” landings. Listen, I’m not a pilot, I’m Your Survival Guy, government has a history of screwing up landings and cleaning up the wreckage after the crash. I’m not in the prediction business. Prices are what they are. They can go as high as someone else is willing to pay. Prices are essentially a qualitative event. I want you focused on the quantitative. In other words, I want you to get cold hard cash in the form of dividends to be “invested” in the chaos. … [Read more...]

You’re asking me about Bitcoin. I get it. With all the mad money created by the Fed, inflation running hot, and a supply chain rusting away, you want to know my thoughts on Bitcoin. As I’ve written to you before, I’m not buying it. Does that mean I don’t believe in the science? No, not necessarily. I just don’t need to be the first one to find out if it’s wrong. Let me explain. One of the hardest parts about investing is being human. We get excited about stuff. We don’t like to feel like we’re “missing the boat.” That eats us alive inside. It’s nearly impossible to get it out of your mind … [Read more...]

For those of you still working off Thanksgiving dinner, you may have missed the 900-plus-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Unfortunately, for some, the decline forced investors to sell their own shares because of margin calls. As the WSJ reports: Markets sold off worldwide on Friday after South Africa raised alarm about the new “variant of concern” that the World Health Organization named Omicron. The panic may be driven more by the fear of new government lockdowns and social distancing than by the variant itself. The Dow fell 2.5% while U.S. crude prices tumbled 13% as the … [Read more...]

Why would you expose yourself to this? The Hood has a lot of heart saying the matter’s resolved after a million accounts are compromised. Peter Rudegeair and Robert McMillan report for The Wall Street Journal on the recent hack of Robinhood Markets, to the tune of five million users' data breached, writing: Robinhood Markets Inc. HOOD +0.26% said Monday that an intruder gained access to its systems last week and made off with the personal information of millions of its users. The trading app said in a blog post that the incident took place on Wednesday evening and that the breach has since … [Read more...]

Listen, this is how I want you to think about yourself as an investor. Imagine you own a wonderful business. We’ll call it Gold Goose Inc. It pays you a handsome salary, plus annual increases to keep up with the times. You retire with a nest egg worth more than you ever thought you’d be worth, and you need to invest it. What do you do? For Your Survival Guy, the next best thing to Gold Goose Inc. is to invest in a basket of eggs that pay dividends that regularly increase to keep pace with inflation. That’s exactly what Young Research’s Retirement Compounders stocks try to do. See … [Read more...]

On Friday night, Becky and I visited with college friends for dinner at Scales and Shells here in Newport. It was so much fun. It had been a few years since the last time we were together, bringing back some great memories of our time at Babson. With our oldest child now a sophomore in college and our youngest applying, it’s a funny time to be a parent. We’re in sort of a slack tide, knowing day-to-day life will be a lot different this time next year when we’re empty nesters. It’s hard not to think, “Wow, this has gone by fast.” On Saturday, Becky and I felt like college kids taking a … [Read more...]

It never ceases to amaze me how fiduciaries take risks with other people’s money. A case in point is Farouki Majeed, an Ohio pension manager overseeing the investments responsible for the benefits to over 80,000 retired librarians, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and other former employees. How is he doing it? By adding risk. Not good. “The solution for Mr. Majeed—as well as other pension managers across the country—is to take on more investment risk," reports Heather Gillers at The Wall Street Journal. "His fund and many other retirement systems are loading up on illiquid assets such as … [Read more...]