Resources and Stories for Real People

Last year, I visited New York and found myself walking through Greenwich Village. I couldn’t help but notice how the neighborhood looked qualitatively different from the 1940s photographs I’d seen and from my memories of it when I lived there more than 10 years ago. Sure, there were still some

What do gold, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), paintings, furs and diamonds all have in common? Things you’ve seen on a “Real Housewives” episode, you say? Maybe so, but here’s what we had in mind. Each is an asset that produces no cash flow. They’re like buying a goose that lays

Declining interest rates are generally a good thing for bond returns. All else being equal, as bond yields go down, their prices go up. Many people are familiar with this relationship, but what about stocks? Can declining interest rates inform our expectations for future stock returns? This question has come

“Don’t gamble,” Will Rogers said. “Take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.”1 The Psychology Behind Hindsight Bias The psychologist Baruch Fischhoff, who introduced us to hindsight shortcuts and errors, wrote,

Confirmation errors mislead the proverbial dog that believes his bark makes UPS trucks go away. The dog can test his belief by seeking disconfirming evidence. How about not barking next time the UPS truck is in the driveway? If the truck stays in the driveway, that would be confirming evidence;

U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) — a key economic measure capturing the total value of goods and services produced — was recently announced at an estimated growth rate of 3.0% for the second quarter. This follows a -0.5% decline in the prior quarter, which was the first time quarterly U.S.