2 Mar 2026

A Case Study in Speculation, Leverage, and Survival

At the 2025 Acropolis Investor Social — a wonderful evening, only to be topped by this year’s Social — I presented the chart below. The colors were slightly different, and at the time, I hadn’t included the S&P 500 or the Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index. But the message was clear: pockets of speculative excess were forming in unusual corners of the market. I began by revealing Bitcoin. Over the final… Read More

By Tags: , , , ,
2 Feb 2026

Silver’s Momentum Crash

I would estimate that I’ve spent less than an hour thinking about silver in my career, and most of it was preparing to write this. I had heard that silver was on a tear, as was gold, but even more so. I only looked at the last year, but the chart below shows that since early February 2025, ignoring Friday, gold has nearly doubled, and Silver was up 3.5x. The… Read More

By Tags: , , , , ,
8 Dec 2025

Will Artificial Intelligence Tinker or Transform?

A few months ago, I read Coming into View: How AI and Other Megatrends Will Shape Your Investments by Joe Davis, Vanguard’s Chief Economist. It’s a thoughtful book that I recommend. It isn’t overly technical, and it frames the biggest questions investors face today: AI, debt and deficits, demographics, potential deglobalization, and—hardest of all to measure—geopolitical risk. The core question Davis keeps returning to is deceptively simple: can AI generate… Read More

By Tags: , , , , ,
20 Oct 2025

Irrational Exuberance Revisited

Many people are asking whether we’re in the middle of an AI bubble, and the answer, in my opinion, is probably yes. The much harder question is what to do about it. A recent analysis by Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama, calculated that 92 percent of economic growth in the first half of 2025 was related to data-center… Read More

By Tags: , , , , ,
29 Sep 2025

The Fund Performed Fine. Investors, Not So Much

For several years, Morningstar has released its annual Mind the Gap study, which highlights the difference between what a fund returns and the returns investors actually realize. The study underscores a familiar struggle: investors chase performance—jumping into funds after the best gains have passed, or bailing out during a slump only to miss the rebound. The penalty for this behavior is steeper than many realize. Over the 10 years ending… Read More

By Tags: , , , , , ,
22 Sep 2025

We Need New Words for an Age-Old Debate

Perhaps one of the longest-running debates in the investment industry is the so-called “active vs. passive” debate. Most people understand it this way: Will active managers who pick stocks (or bonds) fare better than index funds? The industry of stock-pickers says yes; the index fund companies say no way. The name “passive” is just terrible. It sounds like nobody is doing anything, when in fact index investing is a reflection… Read More

By Tags: , , , , , ,
2 Jun 2025

Gold is Glittering Bright (maybe too bright)

It’s not surprising that clients are inquiring about gold, as it has risen 25.3 percent so far this year. When we started this business in August 2002, I thought gold was a terrible investment idea. However, in the 273 months since then, it has handily beaten foreign stocks and bonds, and even eked out a small win over the S&P 500. That’s right, during this time frame, gold gained 10.9… Read More

By Tags: , , , , , , ,
28 Apr 2025

Public Markets Know that Private Markets are Volatile

For the past five or so years, I’ve been inundated with pitches from alternative investment managers for private investment funds. The flagship private market strategy is private equity, which includes private credit, private real estate, and infrastructure. Like public markets, these broad categories can be broken down further, but the basic point is that anything you can get in the public market is also available in the private market. A… Read More

By Tags: , , , ,
21 Apr 2025

The Trouble with Timing

When the stock market sold -10.7 percent in the three days following Liberation Day, a handful of clients called and asked, ‘Hold the course, right?’ They knew what I would say, and they all held on, and I was relieved. When President Trump paused his tariff plan the following week, the S&P 500 rose 9.5 percent. That wasn’t enough to offset the loss, but it went a long way. One… Read More

By Tags: , , , , , ,
14 Apr 2025

Unhappy Treasuries

The S&P 500 has endured a tough performance run since Liberation Day on April 2nd, falling -5.4 percent. It was worse last week, down -12.0 percent (not including the intra-day lows), but recovered more than half of the losses. Less well known but still covered in the financial press is that bonds are having a hard time, too. Since Liberation Day, the Bloomberg Aggregate bond index has fallen by -1.9… Read More

By Tags: , , , ,