Would You Rather?

I don't pretend to consume information the same way my readers do (I still don't have a Kindle or iPad, though probably should).  I was chatting with a reader over breakfast and this question came up, so I thought I would ask you directly how you would prefer to receive The Idea Farm content...   https://www.surveymonkey.com/jsEmbed.aspx?sm=QzukSsJxC2JwPRaxLTz2MA_3d_3dCreate your free online surveys with...

You Are Not A Good Investor

You probably think you are good at picking stocks (and investing in general).  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are not.  In fact, you are terrible at investing.  Now, there may be a few of you that outperform, and part of that is due to luck, but I am speaking to the collective “you”. The...

Activist Investing – 9 Stocks They’re Buying

Quartz had a fun profile of some activist investors recently.  The profiled best friends Ackman, Icahn, and Loeb in addition to Greenlight, Trian, Jana, Elliott, Starboard, ValueAct, and Relational.   I thought it would be instructive to take a look at a portfolio of these funds to see how it would have performed since 2000, as well as what they are...

Mebane Faber Research Premium Launches!

It has taken me awhile longer to finally get the technology working here, but I think we are all set. If you want to go ahead and signup for the premium version of the blog here is the link.   Future posts will have the WSJ style posts locked down unless you have a login.  I imagine there will be a few...

Low Nominal, Normal Real

I forgot to add these longer series on yields back to 1900 to our post the other day on real and nominal yields, so here you go.    

The End of the Middleman

"I look at where the music industry is now and it’s not helping me so I’ve learned to exist without it!" Replace every "music industry" phrase with "(high fee) financial industry" and you begin to understand.  Phenomenal post by @jaltucher As you all know I'm self publishing my next book in a week or two and have written a longish case study...

AAII Updates

I publish these every once in awhile.  Not much interesting here...      

Silliness In Cyprus

There is a lot of silliness going on across the Atlantic with Cyprus and their bank deposit seizure plan.  (For those that haven't heard here is a brief summary: "In exchange for €10 billion ($13 billion) in rescue money, creditors would impose a one-time tax of 6.75 percent on all bank deposits under €100,000 ($131,000) and 9.9 percent over that...

Shareholder Yield (aka Total Yield)

Nice to see the journalism outlets starting to recognize the silliness of focusing on dividends in isolation.   Below from this weekend Barron's:  

I Have Never Met a Rich Technician

I like Jim Rogers but this quote has always made me chuckle.  I could list dozens of rich technicians, but one of the best sadly recently passed, and I smiled when I saw this headline cross the wires today from Curbed: