index-based funds

28 May 2021
Active investment is great! Just pick the right domain

Investing actively is great. By this, I'm talking about putting your time, energy, talents, knowledge, and expertise into how you invest. On the other hand, investing passively is great too. It really…
17 April 2020
Investing in a business can make you rich. It can also make you poor.

For most of my clients I recommend widely-diversified, low-fee index funds. They're steady, sensible, and almost no one gets really rich from them. Investing in a business is one of the few things tha…
27 March 2020
Could I have picked this market crash?

COVID-19 had me questioning a lot of things, including my long-standing devotion to index-based investing. In retrospect it felt like I could have picked the crash — so could I have? Probably not. The…
7 February 2020
Pay less attention to historical returns

"Past performance is no indication of future performance." If you've looked at any investment product with proper disclosure, you'd be familiar with this refrain. It's a statement that's required by l…
19 July 2019
My (in)efficient market hypothesis

I don't think markets are efficient. Markets move up and down for all sorts of unpredictable, weird reasons. But they're inefficient in ways we can't predict — and valuing a share means betting on a f…
6 August 2018
The folly of predicting market downturns

I'll start with a prediction. At some point in the future, the sharemarket will go down. It might go down in a big way. That's as accurate a prediction as anyone can make — timing and scale are out of…
20 May 2018
The difference between a financial adviser and an investment manager

If the first thing you ask a financial adviser is where they get their research from, you're probably conflating two very different roles. Advisers work with clients; investment managers sit in front…
8 March 2018
Build wealth by being lazy!

You're lazy sometimes. I know this because you're human. The trick is to use that laziness — or, more charitably, behavioural inertia — as a feature rather than a bug. Set things up once so wealth-bui…
29 October 2017
How to get better-than-market returns

For most people, I recommend low-cost, index-based funds — don't try to beat the market, just make sure the market doesn't beat you. But the honest answer is that you can get better-than-market return…
30 July 2017
Excessive fees – “a tax on smart people who don’t realise their propensity for doing stupid things”

Excessive investment fees are "a tax on smart people who don't realise their propensity for doing stupid things" — a line from a Freakonomics episode that cuts close to how I think about my job as a f…
12 April 2017
“Hurry up and wait” – why laziness is an investor’s best friend

In most of life, the best things go to those who hustle. Spend more, get more. Investing is the inversion: the riches go to those who wait, and performance and fees are inversely related. You’re rewar…
4 April 2017
“Fees never sleep.” – Warren Buffett’s bet

For most people, I advocate investing in low-cost passive investments. Warren Buffett is probably a bigger advocate than me. He bet $500,000 that a low-cost S&P 500 index fund would beat a basket of h…
11 March 2017
Most financial advice wasn’t written for you

Young professionals at the start of their careers face a genuinely different financial situation from people nearing retirement. Different circumstances, different needs, different objectives — which…

index-based funds

Active investment is great! Just pick the right domain

Investing in a business can make you rich. It can also make you poor.

Could I have picked this market crash?

Pay less attention to historical returns

My (in)efficient market hypothesis

The folly of predicting market downturns

The difference between a financial adviser and an investment manager

Build wealth by being lazy!

How to get better-than-market returns

Excessive fees – “a tax on smart people who don’t realise their propensity for doing stupid things”

“Hurry up and wait” – why laziness is an investor’s best friend

“Fees never sleep.” – Warren Buffett’s bet

Most financial advice wasn’t written for you

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