As I work on putting together my portfolio’s end-of-year performance review, I thought I’d drop a brief note on the state of the markets today. As of January 24th, the stock market has fully recovered from its 2022-23 drawdown (if we go by the S&P 500 price index). … [Read more...] about How can it be a bull market?
MarketTiming
Keeping it simple, unlike Mr. Ackman
Bill Ackman is a well-known and widely followed hedge fund manager. During the Covid market selloff in early 2020, he made several billion dollars by timely moving in and out of the markets. First, he bought credit default swaps to hedge against panic in the bond market. That … [Read more...] about Keeping it simple, unlike Mr. Ackman
Did you double your money since the recession?
I didn’t! If you have been following the financial media, you must have seen recent headlines like this one: “If you’d bought stocks in March 2020, you would have doubled your money by now”. This one was from Yahoo! Money. There were similar mentions in CNBC, Financial Times, and … [Read more...] about Did you double your money since the recession?
A bear market in rear view
About a year ago, I wrote a blog post wishing that all long-term investors get at least one bear market in their investing journeys. In that post, I made the case that a bear market is a blessing in disguise, rather than a curse, for all patient investors. Here we are one year … [Read more...] about A bear market in rear view
The odds of making money in stocks
Whether we like it or not, we investors are always making bets. We invest our capital with the expectation that down the road we will be able to recover all of it plus some. But since the future is unknowable, we implicitly make a bet every time we invest. Specifically, … [Read more...] about The odds of making money in stocks