“I’ll know when it’s time to get back in” No you won’t. Here’s what that day looks like. (answer? Which James didn’t get right? 0%).

“I won’t wait to get back in until an all-time high, I’ll catch most of the rebound. It’s pretty obvious when the recovery happens.” No it’s not. It’s scary all the way up, and no one has the confidence to get back in.

Markets Know More Than You Do, Says Veteran Investor David Booth bloomberg.com/news/videos/20…

What “keeps me up at night” (I hate that phrase) isn’t a bad year. It’s a bad decade. (see 2000-2009 for US large cap) It’s difficult to recover from that, especially if you’re taking $ out instead of putting it in.

Fearing the worst-case scenario is just another way of saying you are completely naive of history. We never experience the worst-case. We face challenges, we make mistakes, we learn from them, adapt, respond, improve, and are ultimately better off than we were before.

Here’s the first forecast in a while that was 100% accurate. dimensional.com/us-en/insights…

You always hear ppl say they’re getting out of the market & will get back in when things “get better” or “when the dust settles.” The truth is, there’s always something to worry about, even at all-time highs like today (See this morning’s WSJ headline). To be a successful

Bailing on small value stocks five years ago, after a rough 2014 to mid 2020 stretch, has cost you several % a year in missed out on returns (despite more recent struggles).

Sensible investing in two simple steps: Decide on your stock/bond mix, and don’t take too much bond risk Decide on your mix within stocks of big growth (profitable) and small/cheap. These are the decisions that will guide the vast majority of your lifetime investment outcomes.

The financial media will never admit or acknowledge that you don’t have to worry. They will always cajole you into thinking there’s some risk you need to be on the look out for or be defensive about. And when they don’t have anything? The fallback is “prices are too high.” (aka

If you’re going to consume financial media, at least understand you’re constantly exposed to mindless narrative fallacy. The media has decided that tariffs are the only story (until there’s a new one that plays better). If market goes up, tariffs are expected to be scaled back.

10yr US stock asset class index returns vs. long-term average (since 1979). Only 1 asset class (US large growth) is over its skis. Everything else is at or below its long-term average. Rarely has there been a better time to be diversified by asset class.

A lot of people think they’re investing—and not gambling—because they own index funds. That’s not always the case. 1. Do you own sector funds or “alternative” funds that say “index”? That’s gambling. 2. Are you buying or selling index funds based on chart patterns? Gambling.

But you told us inflation was sure to spike this year and the economy to contract. Is this the closest we’ll get to a mea culpa?

The small value premium in international markets has been 2x as high as the U.S. premium, more than making up for the relative underperformance of international stocks. Also, it’s hard to look at this data and not conclude the long-term expected return (even today) on small

Diversified asset class investors who had the discipline to stick with small cap value stocks have been rewarded with 2-5%/yr premiums vs market indexes over the last 5 years (along with smaller declines in 2022). It pays to know your market history and not read too much into

One of the reasons why you don’t just diversify globally, but also globally by asset class, is because you don’t know where the actual premium returns will materialize. Over the last 44yrs, in the US the equity premium has been large: 5.5%/yr. The small value premium just 2.1%.