Apex Money Posts

You may have heard that Tesla joined the S&P 500 this week – you’ve probably also heard that Tesla’s stock price has been on a great run this year.

Depending on who you talk to, they may have suggested you buy some yourself… is that good or bad advice? 🙂

Here’s a good list of well-intentioned advice that you should take with a hefty grain of salt:

Bad Investing Advice: What to ignore [and why] [Women Who Money] – “No matter the recommendation or where it comes from, it’s wise to do your homework. Then you can determine the right investment approach for you.”

This next interview with Marc Andreessen is good on a number of levels (including the part about process and “resulting”):

Marc Andreessen On Productivity, Scheduling, Reading Habits, Work, and More [Andreessen Horowitz] – “What I’ve discovered is the number of people who can write something in the middle zone — when they’re trying to explain something that happened last week, month, a year or even a decade — and who I trust to actually give me an objective read on the situation is just a really, really short list. There’s a handful but there aren’t very many.We have one situation currently — what’s literally happening right now [with COVID-19]. Coronavirus is one where everyday I’m looking at all the science and all the economics because these are critical issues. And I’m trying to avoid all the commentary and all of the interpretation. And then the other, as you said, there’s just a very large amount of timeless stuff that really has been proven right over time. You could spend your entire life only reading timeless works which is what smart people used to do.”

The Power of a Part Time Job Even If You Don’t Need Extra Cash [MoneyNing] – “My friend needed quite a few articles before he is launching his site, so it’s so far been a “write as many as you want” type of arrangement. In other words, it’s “eat what you kill and the whole forest is open to you and you only”. This also means that I can directly put a dollar amount to the work I’m putting in for my friend. I honestly haven’t felt this excited about writing an article in a long time. Feeling greedy? Just go write an article. Feeling nervous about the market ups and downs? Write another one. See someone on the street and you felt really bad for him? Go give him some cash and some love, and then go back home to write one more piece.”

This first one isn’t about money directly but has huge implications on our economy and our lives:

A Call For Help [No Mercy/No Malice] – “For almost a year now, we have been retreating. The enemy has exposed our institutions as weak and ineffective, and preyed on a deadly comorbidity: the notion that individual liberty trumps collective sacrifice. The virus has driven us not to a beach, but into our own homes and, more dangerously, into separate spheres of differing truths. The daily death toll has crossed 3,000, hospitals are reaching capacity, and more than one million people contract the virus every week. By late January 2021, the virus will have killed more Americans than died fighting in World War II.”

Larry David and the Game Theory of Anonymous Donations [Nautilus] – “In a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode from 2007, Larry David and his wife Cheryl and their friends attend a ceremony to celebrate his public donation to the National Resources Defense Council, a non-profit environmental advocacy group. Little does he know that the actor Ted Danson, his arch-frenemy, also donated money, but anonymously. “Now it looks like I just did mine for the credit as opposed to Mr. Wonderful Anonymous,” David tells Cheryl. David feels upstaged, as if his public donation has been transformed from a generous gesture to an egotistical one.”

MacKenzie Scott, the Amazon billionaire, is giving away $1 billion a month to charity [Vox] – “One of the wealthiest people in the world, MacKenzie Scott, has spent the end of 2020 giving away about $1 billion a month, a staggering amount that sets a high mark for tech billionaires in terms of speed.”

Hello hello, my money nerds. Let’s end the week with a handful of articles that take a look at the year 2020 as a whole.

How America Invests 2020. [Vanguard] — This is an annual report published by Vanguard. It looks at the personal investing behavior of their five million customers. It’s long and dense and a PDF. (I mean, it’s an actual 56-page publication, you guys!) But it’s interesting for many money nerds. Of more general interest is their short (four-page) summary of action steps investors can take based on the info in the larger report.

What was your best purchase of 2020? [/r/AskReddit] — A simple post in the AskReddit forum that generated 34,200 comments. Want to see what people buy and actually like? This thread has plenty of material, but you have to wade through a lot of crap to find the good stuff. It’s interesting to read what people like…and why.

Notable books of 2020. [Behavioral Scientist] — “Whether you’re reflecting on the year, looking forward to the next, or actively trying to avoid doing either, let this list be your license to find a companion in a behavioral science book or two. And if you’re in the market for a gift for someone who’s open to stretching their mind too, look no further.” These books aren’t exclusively about personal finance — they’re about psychology — but many of them touch on the topic.

Lastly, what would the internet be without cats? It’d be nothing, I tell you! Nothing! Here’s a seven-minute video from The New Yorker that looks at why humans are obsessed with cats, those tiny hyper-carnivores that demand our attention.

That’s it for this week! Jim will be back on Monday with more great stories about money. Enjoy your weekend…

Welcome to Thursday morning, Apexians. As you might expect, we have some money links for you today. Take a look!

Let’s start today with a podcast! Here’s Chelsea from Smart Money Mamas talking about why your money system needs to be as unique as you are. Preach!

Money toys, books, and games for young kids. [One Frugal Girl] — “My children learned about the value of money very early in life through books, games, and toys. I didn’t need to make it overly complicated in the beginning. The simple act of playing with money in real-world scenarios helped them understand the concepts without lengthy lectures.”

A case for claiming Social Security early. [ESI Money] — “Retirees with a long-life expectancy who follow this “claim and invest” strategy could clearly wait until age 70 to start their Social Security benefit as suggested by conventional wisdom, but would this necessarily be the optimal path?”

At the end of today’s stack of stuff, here’s a fun (but 47-minute long) YouTube video about identical strangers. Do you have an unrelated identical twin? Statistically, it’s likely there are seven other people in the world who look just like you. This piece highlights some of those crazy matches.

I’ll be back tomorrow for one last dose of money news this week. See you then!

Hey, let’s mix things up today! Let’s start with our video. Yes, of course we will.

You all know how much of a Swiftie I am, right? I’m a big fan of Taylor Swift’s music — and career. Well, Sunday was Taylor Swift’s 31st birthday. And last week, she dropped her second surprise album of the year.

To celebrate, here’s the video for “Willow”, the lead single from “evermore”.

You probably should know that this video’s narrative picks up precisely from the end of her “Cardigan” video. True story: Swift directed this video too. I’ve enjoyed watching her growth as an entrepreneur. She can do it all!

Now let’s turn our attention to money.

Most Robinhood traders earn lousy returns. [Evidence Investor] — “Robinhood, with commission-free trading, has certainly been successful in its stated mission, having attracted 13 million users with its app that makes trading easy. Unfortunately, its application also leaves naïve individual investors more susceptible to well-documented biases that lead to speculative trading and poor results, with the winner being Robinhood itself.” If you’re a Robinhood user, please read this.

The role of randomness in short-term investing. [Novel Investor] — “A paradox of investing is how much randomness plays a role — both good and bad — in short-term investment track records. Something with the worst odds of success will pay off every now and then. Someone will make a ton of money. It happens with long shots. Lotteries too. For most people, most of the time, long shots don’t pay off.”

The eco-yogi slumlords of Brooklyn. [The Cut] — “Gendville and Brooks-Church’s business ventures ran like a well-oiled, if extremely tenuous, machine. On the surface, they catered to the upper crunchy crust of Brooklyn, hawking imported wooden toys, prenatal-yoga classes, and rooftop gardens to gentrifiers with money to burn. But it was ‘yoga on the outside, pure capitalism on the inside,’ as one former Area employee puts it.”

Okay, that’s all we have for today. But I’ll be back again tomorrow with more stories from the world of personal finance.

Top of the morning, money nerds! It’s Tuesday, and this is Apex Money, your source for hand-curated links to the most interesting, most fun stories from the world of personal finance. Let’s take a look at what I’ve found for you today.

The best ways to get a raise (even in a pandemic). [Yes, I Am Cheap] — “If you’re considering getting a raise, it is normal to feel very nervous, as asking for more pay can be nerve-wracking. People get plagued with anxiety or self-doubt when it comes to negotiating and women, particularly, suffer from this more than men. If you plan correctly before approaching your manager for a raise your chances of success may go up significantly.”

The hidden algorithms that trap people in poverty. [MIT Technology Review] — “Credit scores have been used for decades to assess consumer creditworthiness, but their scope is far greater now that they are powered by algorithms: not only do they consider vastly more data, in both volume and type, but they increasingly affect whether you can buy a car, rent an apartment, or get a full-time job. Their comprehensive influence means that if your score is ruined, it can be nearly impossible to recover.”

What is a financial plan and what should it cover? [My Own Advisor] — “We hire professionals because they are trained to a level that is higher than our own. A quality advice-only financial planner has credentials and experience that make an investment in their services worthwhile, and in the end, will likely save you much more than it costs (not to mention the confidence and peace of mind that you are making decisions that are right for you).”

Finally, did you know that the childhood game of “tag” has now become a professional sport? It’s true! This 18-minute video from Vox looks at the creation of World Chase Tag, the new adult competitive version of the game.

That’s it for Tuesday, my friends, but I’ll be back in the morning with more great links. Take care!

Well, my friends, it’s Monday — and it feels like it haha. After a pleasant weekend, here I am at 4:30 on Monday morning slaving away in the word mines. But that’s okay! I actually enjoy the labor.

Let’s take a look at some of the gems I’ve uncovered while digging through money articles this morning…

Money is the megaphone of identity. [More to That] — “When you take a look at your bank account balance, what do you feel? Well, if you’re a part of the 28% of Americans that have no emergency savings whatsoever, the answer to that question will likely be a combination of fear and anxiety. When the sole purpose of money is to provide for the basic necessities of life, then your relationship with it will be a shaky one. Scarcity creates fragility.” I really like this piece. It’s long, but worth it.

How women can take control of their financial lives. [Barron’s] — “Women of all ages, education levels, and income brackets are still behind the times when it comes to taking control of their big-picture financial decisions…Are we generalizing? You bet. But as loathsome as the notion of stereotyping women as being no-good-at-the-money-stuff is, there’s an alarming amount of data demonstrating that women in general simply don’t engage with their finances often, or thoroughly, enough.”

Does expensive wine taste better? [Kent Hendricks] — “The answer to the question — does expensive wine really taste better? — is not such an answer. Instead, this answer is a series of layers, each one more complicated than the last, and each one introducing a new set of questions — and a new set of revelations about taste, status, and perception.”

To wrap things up, here’s a fun 26-minute video from 1957 that demonstrates the difference between American dialects and accents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8ZNnlYvXw0

I’ve been fascinated by dialect (and language usage) differences for a while now, and there are a couple of points worth noting.

• First, our accents don’t just vary by location; they also vary across time. If you watch clips of people — especially kids — talking in the 1940s and 1950s, they speak differently than we do today.
• Second, mass media has weakened regional dialect differences. Yes, they still exist, no doubt. But movies, then television, and now the internet have all conspired to make our speech more standardized than in the past.

Okay, that’s plenty for a Monday. I’ll see you again tomorrow with more stories about how to master your money — and your life.

While everyone wants the stock market to go up, short sellers want some part of it to go down. And, for the most part, they get a bad rap.

These days, short sellers are far more savvy. They don’t hope that a company is overpriced, they look for the ones they know are overpriced. They look for companies where there appears to be some shadiness (or just a little creative accounting) that may be inflating a stock’s price.

When they find it, they pounce… and then tell the whole world about it so the drop happens fasters.

What a world. 🙂

Would You Pay a 22-Year-Old Stanford Grad to Expose Wrongdoing? [Institutional Investor] – “At an age [22] when his peers are still learning the ropes, Dorsey is putting out a successful newsletter about a sector of investing that doesn’t get the sustained coverage it arguably should: activist short-selling, betting against a company’s stock while alleging fraud or other problems.”

How to Buy Gifts That People Actually Want [Will Patrick] – “Every year, we buy more bad gifts than we realise and nobody tells us about it. Here’s how to avoid the most common pitfalls and to use psychology to drastically improve your gift-giving game.”

Start Meeting Your Money Goals with a Yearly Budget Plan [Cash for Tacos] – “When people think of budgeting, they typically think of a monthly budget. And while the monthly budget is a useful tool for many, over the years I realized there was something missing from it. I kept finding myself overspending each month and therefore I wasn’t able to meet my savings goals. Saving money was an afterthought and unplanned expenses kept popping up. What I finally realized is that my monthly budget missed the big picture. It focused only on a single month, which often forgets those pesky non-monthly expenses and long-term money goals. And that is when I developed my own yearly budget.”

Country Boy [Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain] – “I will tell you from numerous visits — when you are sitting at the sushi bar at Masa, eating the most insanely high test rice and fish in the world, prepared by the man himself, you can be assured that though someone somewhere on the planet might just possibly be eating as well as you — NO ONE is eating better.”

Have a great weekend!

Technology has improved our lives but also introduces new ways to defraud people.

The Imposter [Toronto Life] – “Shaun MacDonald was an ambitious tech innovator whose start-up was going to revolutionize the crypto economy. His wealthy investors had no idea that their charismatic founder was really Boaz Manor, a notorious Canadian white-collar criminal. It was only a matter of time before they discovered the truth.”

How a flu virus shut down the US economy in 1872 – by infecting horses [The Conversation] – “In 1872 the U.S. economy was growing as the young nation industrialized and expanded westward. Then in the autumn, a sudden shock paralyzed social and economic life. It was an energy crisis of sorts, but not a shortage of fossil fuels. Rather, the cause was a virus that spread among horses and mules from Canada to Central America.”

An Elderly Mathematician Hacked the Lottery for $26 Million [Entrepreneur’s Handbook] – “Each week his bets soared higher and higher. Some weeks, he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. The game required you buy the tickets in person. So when a rolldown was coming, he and his wife split up into two cars and hit countless convenience stores across the state. The government, with its usual iceberg reaction time, didn’t notice anything strange. The Selbees continued this mission for a full decade without the state noticing. Eventually, a group of students at MIT noticed a flaw in the math too, and started buying up tickets.”

Of course MIT jumped in. 🙂 All kidding aside, there’s no “hacking involved.” It was just lottery designers being a little sloppy with their math. 🙂

OK this last one has nothing to do with month but is absolutely CRAZY – Toledo Zoo first to record biofluorescence in Tasmanian Devils [WTOL]:

The Toledo Zoo is excited to report the first documented case of biofluorescence in Tasmanian devils!

Biofluorescence refers to the phenomenon by which a living organism absorbs light and reemits it as a different color.
#ToledoZoo #Biofluorescence #TasmanianDevils pic.twitter.com/IxhXvHzqMl

— Toledo Zoo (@ToledoZoo) December 5, 2020

A Tasmanian Devil’s eyes, ears AND snout are emitting a blue glow.

WHAT!?!?!?!?!??!

Someone once asked me, “is there a downside to index funds?” – yes, but it might not be the obvious answer:

The New Money Trust: How Large Money Managers Control Our Economy and What We Can Do About It [American Economic Liberties Project] – “In 2018, the late Vanguard founder Jack Bogle sounded an alarm about the risk that “a handful of giant institutional investors will one day hold voting control of virtually every large U.S. corporation. He said that the impact of this “growing dominance” on financial markets, corporate governance, and regulation will be “major issues in the coming era.””

The article is long and meaty, I scanned through most of it, but I enjoyed the slightly deeper dive into the impact of Covid on various funds. The shock of the crisis forced many “passive” funds to take action as a result of redemptions and price mismatches. (also the Federal Reserve stepped in)

The article goes into the risks of index funds after the section titled “Investment Funds and Risks to Financial Stability.”

Explore Or Exploit? How To Choose New Opportunities [Farnam Street] – “One big challenge we all face in life is knowing when to explore new opportunities, and when to double down on existing ones. Explore vs exploit algorithms – and poetry – teach us that it’s vital to consider how much time we have, how we can best avoid regrets, and what we can learn from failures. [..] One of the most important factors in determining whether to continue exploring or to exploit what you’ve got is time. Christian and Griffiths explain that ‘seizing a day and seizing a lifetime are two entirely different endeavors. . . . When balancing favorite experiences and new ones, nothing matters as much as the interval over which we plan to enjoy them.'”