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CLX23 Barchart Interactive Chart 09 28 2023

Look to the Markets for Clarity

It’s confusing out there these days. There’s so much information about how the economy is doing, what inflation will do, whether jobs are coming back ...
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Connoisseur Investors

As a lover of good wine, I understand the attraction towards the most prestigious brands. Petrus, Romanée-Conti, Château Margaux, Sassicaia, Opus One, etc. Not only ...
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Why Investors Cannot Outperform Benchmarks

I wrote this five years ago on Medium, but I have some new comments below. https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/why-investors-cannot-outperform-simple-benchmarks-d6a587a54967 So many people are focused on fees, liquidity and strategy ...
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Know Your Patients

Today, it’s all about scaling — raising a lot of money, managing a lot of money, growing the business every quarter and increasing the bottom ...
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Reliable is Cool

We all love more features, more customization, more of the bells and whistles. We get bored with tried-and-true. We crave the new-and-improved even if it ...
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Too Many Metrics

I don’t have performance-standards for my trading. No goals for annualized growth figures or anything like that. That’s a recipe for stress and failure. I ...
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Excess Gets Washed Away

Forest fires clear the way for new growth. Storms remove stale air out of a region. Predators cull the weak, which helps control overpopulation. Bear ...
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Medicating the Chaos

Deep down, we all know cycles are natural and something to expect when playing the markets. Stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, investment strategies — hell, everything ...
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Research is Overrated

This weekend I was speaking with a young trader and a question about research inevitably came up. “What research are you working on to maintain ...
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Distaste for Waste

Most people gather too much sludge in their portfolios. They start out with a few mutual funds and ETFs then, before they know it, a ...
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Ditch the Script

The answer to what the markets will do cannot be found in multiple choice answers A through D. The question to ask is not “what ...
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Where Are Markets Headed?

Where we are might serve as a pretty good indicator of where we’re going. The trick is to actually observe what’s happening, not what’s being ...
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My Forever Home

Nothing is forever. We all know it. Healthy and successful people prepare accordingly while others hope and wish for ideal. Trading preparation for hope is ...
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Seeing is Believing

Changing someones mind with words doesn’t work. They need to see action. They need real life results. Nature requires us to adapt, but it’s funny ...
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Investment vs. Exposure

One makes you feel cozy. The other makes you feel afraid. One makes you feel like you have control. The other makes you feel like ...
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No Pressure to Grow

Making money in the markets is hard enough without the added pressure of bloated business costs. The most important thing we can do as managers ...
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Last Year Doesn’t Matter

I’m a New York Giants fan. They over-achieved this season and made the playoffs, but were very much a mediocre team. A few bounces here ...
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Trend-Following Balances Optimism and Pessimism

Absent a systematic and responsible plan, our emotions will run things. When shit hits the fan, we’ll be too scared to get in. When we ...
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What Are You Talking About?

Fundamental traders have been getting their teeth kicked in this year. Perusing through some Q3 letters recently, I see plenty of jargon explaining why performance ...
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Why Should I Invest With You vs. Them?

Sometimes, I get asked this question. My honest response:  “I don’t know. Try us both out and see who prefer. If you don’t choose me, ...
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Crazy, Stupid, Trends

As I’ve said many times, I am an anti-fundamentalist. I do not comb through a company’s financials or industry reports to calculate the “right” price ...
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Avoiding Nice

I have nothing in common with a person who thinks it’s a good idea to hold on to META, for example, through a -70% decline ...
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Motivation by Frustration

Working at my first job after college in 2007, I recall getting the idea to start a fund. It was mostly a “that would be ...
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Harvest Season

Fall is here. Crops are ready to be harvested. All of the hard work farmers have done since the spring is about to pay off.  ...
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Words Cannot Save You

When people get nervous they embrace many unhealthy remedies. They do all they can to avoid feeling nervous. In the markets, a popular remedy is ...
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Pareidolia

Bulls and Bears suffer from the same affliction — pareidolia. That is, seeing something, typically a pattern or image, that isn’t there. Examples of pareidolia: ...
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"Like Kids"

I had never read Lord of the Flies, but recently I’ve been intrigued by the old classics, so I picked it up. Early in the ...
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Make Room

Too much of one thing can ruin the whole thing. A chef must be mindful of the ingredients s/he uses so as to not overpower ...
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Eventually…

Investing takes patience. And faith. Faith that opportunities will eventually come. From where? We don’t know. When? We don’t know that either. Many people, uncomfortable ...
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Show Your Work

The hardest thing is sticking around. Surviving in the investing business, hell in any business, is a success in and of itself. Navigating the market, ...
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Bubbles are Becoming the Norm

We don’t need an advanced degree to know that markets have gotten more bubbly lately. For those of us who watch the markets regularly, we’ve ...
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Planning vs. Preparing

My wife is pregnant with our first child. We’ve been talking a lot about the future lately — where we’re going to live, whether to ...
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Dig for Inspiration

You can learn a lot about life by spending time in the garden. The dynamics and behaviors that exist within the garden are also present ...
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