TBB Best of Web: Investment Truths, Get America High, Secret FEMA, Hitchhiking Art, Terminal

We bring you some investment truths, the man who got America high, learn all about secret FEMA, a wild hitchhiking story and our sad Terminal experience in the airport.

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In the continuous evolution of this blog, in an effort to stop spending so much time on it barely making minimum wage, I am making another change. I am going to make these (former “Sunday”) eclectic type posts more frequently. Maybe every Tuesday and Thursday (assuming I have five worthy links each that is) and leave the blog Buzz type posts for Monday, Wednesday and Friday. #developing

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36 Obvious Investment Truths

These are great!

1. If you need to spend your money in a relatively short period of time it doesn’t belong in the stock market.

2. If you want to earn higher returns you’re going to have to take more risk.

3. If you want more stability you’re going to have to accept lower returns.

4. Any investment strategy with high expected returns should come with the expectation of losses.

5. The stock market goes up and down.

6. If you want to hedge against stock market risk the easiest thing to do is hold more cash.

7. Risk can change shape or form but it never really goes away.

8. There’s no such thing as a perfect portfolio, asset allocation or investment strategy.

9. No investor is right all the time.

10. No investment strategy can outperform at all times.

11. Almost any investor can outperform for a short period of time.

12. Size is the enemy of outperformance.

13. Brilliance doesn’t always translate into better investment results.

14. “I don’t know” is almost always the correct answer when someone asks you what’s going to happen in the markets.

15. Watching your friends get rich makes it difficult to stick with a sound investment plan.

16. If you invest in index funds you cannot outperform the market.

17. If you invest in active funds there’s a high probability you will underperform index funds.

18. If you are a buy and hold investor you will take part in all of the gains but you also take part in all of the losses.

19. For buy and hold to truly work you have to do both when markets are falling.

20. Proper diversification means always having to say you’re sorry about part of your portfolio.

21. Day trading is hard.

22. Outperforming the market is hard (but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible).

23. There is no signal known to man that can consistently get you out right before the market falls and get you back in right before it rises again.

24. Most backtests work better on a spreadsheet than in the real world because of competition, taxes, transaction costs and the fact that you can’t backtest your emotions.

25. Compound interest is amazing but it takes a really long time to work.

26. Investing based on what every billionaire hedge fund manager says is a great way to drive yourself insane.

27. It’s almost impossible to tell if you’re being disciplined or irrational by holding on when your investment strategy is underperforming.

28. Reasonable investment advice doesn’t really change all that much but most of the time people don’t want to hear reasonable investment advice.

29. The best investment process is the one that fits your personality enough to allow you to see it through any market environment.

30. Successful investing is more about behavior and temperament than IQ or education.

31. Stock-picking is more fun but asset allocation will have more to do with your overall performance.

32. Don’t be surprised when we have bear markets or recessions. Everything is cyclical.

33. You are not Warren Buffett.

34. The market doesn’t care how you feel about a stock or what price you paid for it.

35. The market doesn’t owe you high returns just because you need them.

36. Predicting the future is hard.

The Man Who Got America High

What a WILD life story this is! And an example of great writing too.

He chartered the Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead in private jets, while smuggling planeloads of Pablo Escobar’s drugs on the side. After disappearing for decades, Alfred Dellentash Jr. finally shares his unbelievable life story—for the very first time.

This is one article I started reading and just could not stop until I read it all!

The Secret History of FEMA

Well, FEMA is in the news again so this in depth article about its origins and how it has evolved is timely.

During the past seven decades, the agency has evolved from a top-secret series of bunkers designed to protect US officials in case of a nuclear attack to a sprawling bureaucratic agency tasked with mobilizing help in the midst of disaster.

Along the way, FEMA’s forefathers created a legacy that is too often forgotten. Inside those bunkers during the 1970s, the nation’s emergency managers invented the first online chat program—the forerunner to Slack, Facebook Messenger, and AIM, which have together transformed modern life. [I bet you didn’t know that!]

And much more!

The dying art of hitchhiking

I recently discovered the writings of this Robert Skinner dude. Kind readers pointed me to this article after I posted his hilarious article on traveling with camels while having his parents along for the ride.

This is just a wild trip…You have been warned:

Some argument started up between the girl and her boyfriend in the front seat. We were doing about 120 when he climbed out the window. Only his curled white fingers and his legs from the knees down were still in the car, and he was trying to yell in through the window. Most of what he was yelling was being whipped away by the wind, so no one could really understand what he was saying or why he wasn’t in the car anymore. We were all grabbing at him with both hands, trying to drag him back in. The car was driving itself, more or less, and it drove like a drunk. I could hear beeping horns and squealing tyres but had no idea where they were coming from. Neither did the driver.

“What the hell was that?” he kept saying.

We were coming up fast behind a caravan, lurching forwards and sideways trying to get around. There was a B-double to our right, blocking us in, so the driver swung left and tried overtaking on the gravel shoulder. We clattered past the caravan. Gravel pinged off the windows and someone yelled out “Watch the paint job!” and then we were back on the bitumen ahead of the caravan and the driver turned around and said, “So where you want us to take you?”

I looked down and saw my pants were wet from sweaty handprints. Only two of the handprints were mine.

“You know what? Here’s fine.”

That got all of them yelping.

“What the hell? We’re not good enough for you now?”

The driver, indignantly, threw his hands in the air.

“You don’t just turn down an offer of friendship like that!” he almost screamed. “Where are you going to?”

Terminal

How the airport came to embody our national psychosis.

Oh boy, talk about this being relevant to the core of my readership.

This is a history lesson to the sad affair that the airport experience has become today…But it doesn’t have to if you get the Amex Platinum card with my links. Oops, sorry, I read too many expert miles & points blogs I guess 🙂

And I leave you with this…

Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs To Ignore