You cannot watch a baseball game these days without hearing about a batter's launch angle. Launch angle is the measurement of a batted ball's vertical trajectory. Since 2015, hitters have begun optimizing their swings for the ideal launch angle (25-35 degrees). This...
I just finished reading AstroBall, the story of how the Houston Astros baseball team was torn down and re-built from the ground up. Good story, quick read, and written by Ben Reiter of Sports Illustrated. Reiter was the author of a Sports Illustrated cover story that...
Creating a portfolio without making an investment policy statement means failing to acknowledge that investing is an emotional endeavor. For those of you who don't know what an investment policy statement is, let me begin with a story: In Homer's epic, The Odyssey,...
Historically speaking, recessions have been bad for stocks. One way to "catch a glimpse" of whether the economy is nearing a recession is to follow the index of Leading Economic Indicators. Examples of "leading" indicators would be: Jobless claims, Wage growth (or a...
What’s in a name? For a lot of businesses, the actual name of the business is not what is most important. What did ‘google’ mean before there was Google? ‘Amazon’ was just the name of a rainforest before Jeff Bezos turned it into the behemoth it is today. ‘Facebook’...
Risk management is a topic we hear a lot about when it comes to investing. Its popularity tends to ebb and flow based on recent market performance. This seems intuitive to me because when the risk we're trying to manage doesn't occur, risk management often looks like...
What makes the buy and hold strategy so difficult for investors? There are plenty of articles written about this subject. You can read about it here, here and here. To sum it up, not many people can withstand the short-term pain for the long-term benefit. But what if...
Discolored surf, choppy water, a break in the wave pattern - these attributes signal one of the most dangerous aspects of visiting the beach: rip currents. The United States Lifesaving Association estimates roughly 100 drownings and over 80% of rescues performed by...
News (or noise) can be difficult to separate from facts (or signals). As an industry, Wall Street is LOUSY at communicating. Look at this headline from Marketwatch last evening: ? Why investors should dread the month of May—especially this year Published: Apr 30,...
Yesterday, Jeff Bezos put out his annual letter to shareholders, which you can read here. Jeff shared his thoughts on what makes Amazon so successful: high standards. He acknowledges that a combination of many things makes Amazon what it is, but strongly believes...
