December 2013

My Thoughts on Robo Advisors

My colleagues Tadas Viskanta and Felix Salmon have each written about the robo advisors who’ve been raising assets of late (albeit in very small portions, by and large). Wealthfront, Betterment, SigFig, Personal Capital and whichever one sprouts up next month all have slightly unique business models but, in general, they are offering professional-caliber portfolio management…

The Biggest Posts on TRB in 2013

These were the biggest posts on TheReformedBroker.com this year, I’m really proud of them and when I look back, I realize how much I was helped just by writing them. The amount of thinking or reading and researching and soul-searching that goes into the blog is a big part of my investing process. It forces…

Facebook’s Worst Nightmare

As part of a European Union-funded study on social media, we are running nine simultaneous 15-month ethnographic studies in eight countries. What we’ve learned from working with 16-18 year olds in the UK is that Facebook is not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried. Mostly they feel embarrassed even to be associated…

Chart o’ the Day: “Overbought”

It’s easy to poke fun at people who’ve been using valuation or some other fundamental indicator as a market timing signal. It’s demonstrably ridiculous and the results for the most stubborn among them have been disastrous. Equally ridiculous is the idea that any one or two technical indicators can tell you when an uptrend or…

Merry F%@#ing Buyback Christmas

2013 was the Year of the Buyback. You really don’t need any presents today because you’ve been getting them all year, from your Secret Santas in Corporate America! Share repurchases were the driving force behind virtually everything this year. According to Steven Russolillo’s piece at the Wall Street Journal, we saw roughly $128.2 billion in…