Time seems to have slowed down. March felt like it lasted longer than some years. February feels like a different lifetime. It’s not just you. Everyone I talk to feels the same. There’s a well-known idea that time feels like it speeds up as you age. Summer break feels like an ete … | Continue reading
Drive past the Pentagon and there is no trace of the plane that crashed into its walls almost 19 years ago. But drive three minutes down the road, to Reagan National Airport, and the scars of September 11th are everywhere. Shoes off, jackets off, belts off, toothpaste out, hands … | Continue reading
Drive past the Pentagon and there is no trace of the plane that crashed into its walls almost 19 years ago. But drive three minutes down the road, to Reagan National Airport, and the scars of September 11th are everywhere. Shoes off, jackets off, belts off, toothpaste out, hands … | Continue reading
“How are you holding up?” That may be the most common question being asked around the world these days. I’ve posed it to dozens of people. Several have asked me the same. Two answers are common. “Devastated,” or something similar is one. “I have good days and bad days” is another … | Continue reading
Everyone wants a map. Just a simple guide to what’s going to happen next. In search of a map it’s become common to try to match our current situation to past crises. Is this like 2008? Similar to 9/11? Is this like the 1918 flu pandemic? Or maybe the Great Depression? But none of … | Continue reading
Unknowns exceed knowns even in the best of times. Today, that’s increased exponentially. No one can expect their ability to predict the next year to be any better than their ability to predict the last year. The speed of change anchors the accuracy of predictions, so the year ahe … | Continue reading
Belief doesn’t have to be black or white. It lives on a spectrum, filled with asterisks. There are things I believe most, which are forces so powerful they’re universal and hard to overcome. Other beliefs are squishier. You can believe in something but know it has exceptions, qua … | Continue reading
A list of ideas, in no particular order and from different fields, that help explain how the world works: Depressive Realism: Depressed people have a more accurate view of the world because they’re more realistic about how risky and fragile life is. The opposite of “blissfully un … | Continue reading
Jeff Immelt left General Electric in worse shape than he found it. Critics were harsh when he stepped down as CEO in 2017. Some said his mistakes were obvious, the solutions easy. Immelt had a great response for them: “Every job looks easy when you’re not the one doing it.” “Easy … | Continue reading
Brand loyalty, like everything else, is cyclical. In the 1920s it was, unsurprisingly, at a nadir. Then, encouraged by the New Deal, consumerism rallied in the succeeding decade; however, brand sentiment remained weak as companies, still reeling from the Great Depression, lacked … | Continue reading
Harry Houdini was more than an escape artist. Anything that made people gasp interested him and was something he would try. One of his famous tricks was letting big men punch him in the gut as hard as they could. Houdini – an amateur boxer before becoming a magician – said he cou … | Continue reading
Calls for a new type of capitalism are coming from its leaders. As the World Economic Forum meets this week under the banner of “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World,” they join a growing chorus for reform, which includes the Business Roundtable, Larry Fink at Blackr … | Continue reading
Let me tell you a story about why some people aren’t as financially secure as they could be. It starts with a weight-loss study. Fitness is a $30 billion industry. Almost 40% of Americans are obese. How do you reconcile those figures? You could say a lot of people don’t exercise. … | Continue reading
A common theme in history is that progress happens too slowly to notice while setbacks happen too quickly to overlook. There are many overnight tragedies. There are no overnight miracles. It’s a shame, because the amount of progress we’ve made during most of our lifetimes is both … | Continue reading
Avianca flight 052, from Medellin to New York, was circling JFK for landing in bad weather. It was dangerously low on fuel. The captain told his co-pilot to tell air traffic control they needed to land immediately. The co-pilot radioed JFK: Climb and maintain three thousand and, … | Continue reading
Complicated stuff can stem from a handful of common roots. Understanding those common roots can be more important than trying to wrap your head around complexity. To show you what I mean, let me tell you a story about stories. Tens of millions of fictional stories have been publi … | Continue reading
There are few things as hard to move as the US healthcare system. It’s a $3T+ giant held at rest by a broken business model: fee for service. A growing consensus says the solution is value-based care — a system where providers are paid based on patient health outcomes rather than … | Continue reading
Chris Rock joked that Bill Gates would jump out the window if he woke up with Oprah’s money. Like most comedy, it’s funny because it contains a nugget of truth. Last month a group published a study arguing Americans need $2,467 in emergency savings to avoid falling into a poverty … | Continue reading
Let me tell you about the only time in history a new technology has been adopted by almost everyone virtually overnight. Polio killed 3,145 Americans in 1952. Almost all were kids. It left tens of thousands in wheelchairs or confined to iron lungs, where one described his existen … | Continue reading
Let me tell you about the only time in history a new technology has been adopted by almost everyone virtually overnight. Polio killed 3,145 Americans in 1952. Almost all were kids. It left tens of thousands in wheelchairs or confined to iron lungs, where one described his existen … | Continue reading
An irony of studying history is that we often know exactly how a story ends, but have no idea where it began. Here’s an example. What caused the financial crisis? Well, you have to understand the mortgage market. What shaped the mortgage market? Well, you have to understand the 3 … | Continue reading
An irony of studying history is that we often know exactly how a story ends, but have no idea where it began. Here’s an example. What caused the financial crisis? Well, you have to understand the mortgage market. What shaped the mortgage market? Well, you have to understand the 3 … | Continue reading
No company or investment strategy is proven until it’s survived a calamity. Things that can thrive while the wind is at their back outnumber those that can endure the complete wrath of the real world 100 to 1, at least. Something that’s only viable when everything’s moving in the … | Continue reading
Having more than you need can be a liability masquerading as an advantage, and no sense of “enough” can look like ambition but often leads you over the edge. This applies to everyone, from companies to careers to investments. First, a little story about WeWork and a retired ski r … | Continue reading
Steamboat Willie put Walt Disney on the map as an animator. Business success was another story. Disney’s first studio went bankrupt. Later cartoons were monstrously expensive to produce, and financed at onerous terms. By the mid-1930s Disney had produced more than 400 cartoons – … | Continue reading
Something stupid you can stick with will probably outperform something smart that you’ll burn out on. The investing strategy you should follow, research project you should undertake, or the book you should write doesn’t need to be related to what’s going on in the news. It doesn’ … | Continue reading
This is a trilobite on the left. Poor thing died out 252 million years ago. On the right is a horseshoe crab. They’re ancestral cousins of trilobites and still roam New Jersey shores: One big thing changed over time: Trilobites had dozens of legs, all of which were tiny feet whos … | Continue reading
Think of how big the world is. And how good animals are at hiding. Now think about a biologist whose job it is to determine whether a species has gone extinct. Not an easy thing to do. A group of Australian biologists once discovered something remarkable. More than a third of all … | Continue reading
If something is true in one field it’s probably true in others. Restricting your attention to your own field blinds you to how many important things people from other fields have figured out that are relevant to your own. Here are a few laws – some scientific, some not – from spe … | Continue reading
If something is true in one field it’s probably true in others. Restricting your attention to your own field blinds you to how many important things people from other fields have figured out that are relevant to your own. Here are a few laws – some scientific, some tongue in chee … | Continue reading
During the Vietnam War Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara tracked every combat statistic he could, creating a mountain of analytics and predictions to guide the war’s strategy. Edward Lansdale, head of special operations at the Pentagon, once looked at McNamara’s statistics and … | Continue reading
Hundreds of books and movies have depicted World War II. Eugene Sledge, a Marine who fought on Okinawa and Peleliu, says almost all of them ignore one of the most important stories of the war: how hard it was to keep soldiers stocked with ammunition. U.S. soldiers were supplied w … | Continue reading
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its popularity. And vice versa. This is as true in investing as in anything else, and especially important to keep in mind in a nascent area like crypto where there are still far more open questions than answers. We wanted to shar … | Continue reading
Tens of billions of individual steps have to go right in the correct order to create a human. But only one thing has to happen to cause its demise. Consider: the average kitchen remodel takes 12 weeks. But after just five weeks a human embryo has a brain, a beating heart, a pancr … | Continue reading
Next week I’ll give my 100th investing talk in London. In the last 10 months I’ve spoken in eight countries on five continents. This wasn’t planned – I grew up with a debilitating stutter – but it’s been the most enjoyable part of my career, by far. Speaking is the least scalable … | Continue reading
Do you know what’s happening in this picture? Literally one of the most important events in human history. But here’s the most amazing part of the story: Hardly anyone paid attention at the time. | Continue reading
Richard Held and Alan Hein raised 20 kittens in pitch black darkness. Which is the kind of thing you should only do if it’s necessary to prove a point critical to understanding how the world works. Thankfully they did just that. The two MIT cognitive scientists, working in the 19 … | Continue reading
My wife and I welcomed a daughter into the world yesterday. Her only job now is eating and sleeping. But, one day, when she needs financial advice, here’s what I’ll tell her. It is easy to assume that wealth and poverty are caused by the choices we make, but it’s even easier to u … | Continue reading
This is all that’s left of the Irish elk. The poor thing went extinct 10,000 years ago. The reason why is a good example of how being blessed with a competitive advantage can seed your undoing. Irish elk antlers were comically large. Rather than branch-like antlers of modern elk, … | Continue reading
“I don’t know why people keep using one-year earnings,” economist Robert Shiller once said. “That is the time it takes the Earth to go around the sun. I don’t see any other significance.” I thought about this line when I recently heard an investor say they were expected to come u … | Continue reading
The most important lessons from history are the takeaways that are so broad they can apply to other fields, other eras, and other people. That’s where lessons have leverage and are most likely to apply to your own life. But those things take some digging to find, often sitting la … | Continue reading
Hacks are hard because shortcuts rarely exist. Prizes take time and effort. The personal finance industry – filled with advice that sounds and feels good without moving the needle – needs to recognize this. These aren’t fun hacks, but no one said this was easy. 1. Accepting that … | Continue reading
Cereal is a thing. It is a big thing. It is something we all have a relationship with. Lots of people eat it everyday. Some eat it multiple times of day. I have a love-hate relationship with cereal. It was my favorite food as a kid. On family vacations I would load up on Cap’n Cr … | Continue reading
Health is complicated. Our day-to-day wellbeing and long-term outcomes are determined by many interrelated factors. Some are established, like access to health services. Some we’re just beginning to understand, like the microbiome. Some we’re born with; some we can directly contr … | Continue reading
Beyond Meat’s coming IPO makes clear: something has fundamentally changed in how Americans think about their animal protein consumption. No longer just a trend for the 0.5% of the population that follows a vegan diet, the desire to shift from an animal to plant based diet has gon … | Continue reading
You spend years trying to learn new stuff but then look back and realize that maybe like 10 big ideas truly changed how you think and drive most of what you believe. Brent Beshore recently listed the biggest ideas that changed his life. A few of mine: Everyone belongs to a tribe … | Continue reading
The last three months of 2018 was the worst quarter for stocks in seven years. The first three months of 2019 was the best quarter for stocks in 10 years. Question: Is that volatility a fee or a fine? Fees are something you pay for admission to get something worthwhile in return. … | Continue reading
The Bronze Age was a big leap forward because it was one of the first times humans learned how to make two plus two equal six. Take copper. Its hardness, measured on the 1-10 Mohs scale, is a 3. Pretty soft. Then take tin. Its hardness is a 1.5 on the Mohs scale. Very soft. Mix t … | Continue reading