As someone who has spent decades thinking about money – saving it, investing it and spending it – @ritholtz has come to recognize several fundamental financial truths.
Luckily for you, he’s willing to share them: trib.al/cbCJdBt
Investing is both simple and hard: The basic premise behind successful investing is easily understood: “Invest for the long term, be diversified, watch your costs and let compounding work its magic.”
Behavior is everything: The inability to manage emotions and behavior is the financial undoing of many.
Allowing emotional hot buttons to get pressed is how people go wrong in investing trib.al/IlhUfUl
Understand your role: The markets are populated by all kinds with different risk tolerances, time horizons and financial goals.
Do not assume what any of America’s 800 billionaires have to say about investing is especially relevant for your needs trib.al/IlhUfUl
Spend less than you earn.
Budgeting is simple: Income goes on this side of your household balance sheet, expenditures on that side and make sure the latter is lower than the former.
The majority of the assets in your portfolio — hopefully a diversified, global mix of passive index funds — are the basic meat and potatoes of investing.
You can add seasonings and vegetables to that, a fun trading account perhaps, in moderation trib.al/IlhUfUl
Using borrowed money for nearly anything is the negative manifestation of the three prior rules.
Yes, get a mortgage to buy a house you can afford, but never use borrowed money to buy speculative assets that are subject to further capital calls trib.al/IlhUfUl
Understanding the limitations of your cognitive errors is just the start.
It’s also important to know what inadequacies you have financially, emotionally and behaviorally.
Operating outside of your own capabilities is a good way to run into trouble trib.al/IlhUfUl
You are responsible for your own financial well-being, not the Federal Reserve, the government or whichever huckster is yelling the loudest at the moment.
The sooner you take ownership of your financial circumstances, the better off you will be trib.al/IlhUfUl
Risk is best defined as the probability of your returns differing from your expected outcomes. The problem is that many investors want better-than-market returns while assuming minimal risk.
But returns are a function of the risks assumed trib.al/IlhUfUl
Educate yourself, develop an expertise and add to your professional skill stack.
Invest in your future by making sure you fully fund your retirement accounts every year.
Make those long-term investment needs before spending on short term wants trib.al/IlhUfUl
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By Tuesday, two of the Earth’s wealthiest individuals will have flown into space.
🚀 Richard Branson has already been on July 11 aboard a Virgin Galactic spaceship
🚀 Jeff Bezos’s rocket trip with Blue Origin is on Tuesday trib.al/6oESsn5
It’s taken a couple of decades for both men to realize their ambition of going into space: Blue Origin was founded in 2000 and Virgin Galactic four years later trib.al/6oESsn5
Critics will say that they could have devoted their time and money toward more worthy terrestrial endeavors (and paying more tax).
Hopefully seeing Earth’s majestic curvature inspires better care of this planet trib.al/6oESsn5
“Living” with Covid-19 has been talked about since the pandemic first began.
This so-called “endemic” phase would see Covid-19 look more like influenza, with regular vaccine campaigns and a focus on primary care. Not eradicated, but managed trib.al/2ZghWvM
🇫🇷Paris is swarming once again with workers
😷Masks are dangling from wrists rather than noses
🎶Nightclubs are back open
It’s becoming clear that living with Covid will remain an elusive goal without a renewed boost to pandemic management trib.al/2ZghWvM
The reopening of Europe’s major economies is starting to hit a speed bump as cases rebound. Hospitalizations are on the rise in:
🇪🇸📈 Spain
🇫🇷📈 France
The more contagious delta variant is ripping through the continent trib.al/2ZghWvM
Not least, the value of fresh air. Better ventilation in workplaces, gathering spaces and other public buildings should be a post-Covid priority trib.al/r3TTvqC
Schools, offices and other indoor spaces need better ventilation in order to minimize the harm from:
🦠New coronaviruses
🦠Cold and flu viruses
🦠Every other sort of airborne pathogen trib.al/r3TTvqC
Covid calls for rethinking the way indoor air is controlled.
✅New guidance on safer ventilation in schools is urgent
✅State and local building codes should also be revised
✅Effective ventilation, which often requires more energy, can't be ignored twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…
Since the early 1990s, the very concept of inflation has ceased to be a driving force in politics or the economy.
That’s over. Whichever way you look at it, official U.S. data suggest inflation is the highest in 30 years, and rising trib.al/cgjfeym
June’s consumer price index is 5.4%, the highest in 30 years barring one month in 2008.
🚫🍲⛽️ Excluding food and fuel: 4.5% — its highest in three decades
🚫🏡🚗 Excluding shelter and used cars: 3.6% — still far higher than it’s been since 1993 trib.al/cgjfeym
Yet while it’s obvious the U.S. is currently battling inflation, it isn’t clear that it’ll last, and the market seems unconcerned.
The bond market’s best estimate of the average inflation rate for the next decade remains as low as 2.38% trib.al/cgjfeym
You don’t need to drive far from home to see lawn signs calling to “Unmask Our Kids."
This fall, schools will be open across the country. Some districts are requiring masks, some aren’t. Which side of the debate is right? trib.al/bRGAPoW
Although we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the harm done by Covid-19, we’ve done little to assess the harm that masks can do.
A recent letter in JAMA raised awareness about a crucial issue: Our kids are breathing air that’s full of carbon dioxide trib.al/bRGAPoW
Initially, the argument for masks was that they kept the wearer from infecting others. Nowadays evidence of the benefits is plentiful.
What the JAMA letter argues is that in considering whether to mask schoolchildren, we must weigh the benefits and risks trib.al/bRGAPoW