Bitcoin has been in the news in the past week on several different fronts. El Salvador, which doesn’t have its own currency, became the first country to make bitcoin legal tender for all debts. MicroStrategy Inc., a provider of analytics software and services — the public company that owns the most bitcoins and whose CEO, Michael Saylor, is encouraging other firms to hold bitcoins within their treasury departments — doubled-down by issuing $500 million in debt in order to buy more bitcoins. And bitcoin prices got a boost from a tweet by (who else?) Elon Musk, who indicated that Tesla…

The stock prices of GameStop Corp. (GME) and AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (AMC) continue on their wild rides in 2021. This year AMC is up over 2,600 percent percent and GME is up over 1,500 percent. They are two of the so-called meme stocks along with, Bed Bath & Beyond, Blackberry, Sundial Growers, and others. Can the ascent of these meme stocks continue to the moon or will short-sellers like hedge funds prevail and send prices crashing back to earth? We’ve seen fights like this before, particularly during the dot-com era. I’ll explain what meme stocks are and examine the…

Today, during the National Hockey League (NHL) playoffs, I get to write about two of my favorite topics: investing and hockey (ice hockey, of course — as a stereotypical Canadian who’s skated on frozen ponds and backyard rinks since the age of four, could I be talking about any other kind?). One specific aspect of hockey holds valuable lessons for investors: the exciting time late in a game when the coach of the team that’s behind in the score replaces the goalie with an extra attacker.

I’ll summarize and add my thoughts to a provocative and popular paper by Cliff…

When you think of Sir Isaac Newton, what comes to mind? For me, it’s an image of him sitting under an apple tree, being hit in the head by falling fruit and suddenly coming up with the law of gravity. (I did some fact-checking and found that the concept of gravitation did come to Newton’s mind when apples occasionally fell as he sat under an apple tree, while in a contemplative mood, and that famous apple tree still grows at his childhood home, Woolsthrope Manor near Grantham, England — but there’s no evidence suggesting an apple actually hit him on…

I recently wrote about bitcoin’s risk and return. One of the take-aways was: “Bitcoin offers over-sized risks for the potential returns, with volatility that is orders of magnitude greater than with traditional investments.” Two weeks later — an eternity in crypto-investing — we can see that the volatility is there. Writing about bitcoin is like writing about the weather in an ever-changing climate — you can start writing about the thunderstorms and when you think you are done, the sun comes out, so depending on when you are reading this, the weather may have changed. …

In the late 1770s, the Revolutionary War wasn’t going well for America. The British Army had captured Georgia and Charleston South Carolina, and the British Navy was blocking the U.S. eastern coast. U.S. Army morale was low as the troops were poorly clothed, poorly fed, and often in need of medical attention. Mutinies were a real threat. Also sapping morale was another enemy: soldiers were facing a loss of value of their pay due to inflation.

But in 1780, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts rode to the rescue, with a financial innovation that perhaps played a small role in the eventual…

I have one regret related to the writing of our book, In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio: The Stories, Voices, and Key Insights of the Pioneers Who Shaped the Way We Invest. We conducted interviews with each of the ten featured investment luminaries, but I didn’t have the opportunity to meet the late Jack Bogle — my coauthor, Andrew Lo, had the pleasure of interviewing him. Bogle was the founder of The Vanguard Group, known for its low-cost index funds, a firm that had over $5 trillion in assets under management at the time of his passing in 2019. Perhaps…

David Swensen, Yale University’s endowment fund long-time chief investment officer, recently passed away after a long battle with cancer. A dedicated man who believed in giving back, two days before his passing, he taught the last class for the term for his Investment Analysis course at Yale University. He grew Yale’s endowment fund from $1 billion when he started in 1985, to over $31 billion in 2020. He embraced a diversification model that became known simple as the Yale Model, but should probably be called the Swensen Model. …