Behavior Gap

I have heard the the space shuttle is off course over 90% of the time.

They start by charting a flight plan, kind of like drawing a line from point A to point B. But in reality they are hardly every on that line. The moment they launch they have to …

Oil.

Remember back in March when Goldman Sachs and a host of other experts predicted $200-a-barrel oil. At the time oil was at $130, then it ran to $147 as money poured into energy related investments.

Oil is now close to $50!

Now the point here is not whether …

In what is turning out to be one of the worst years for the markets in a long time it is tempting to question ourselves and ask “How come know one told me?”.

Now you have the “market strategists” coming down from the mountain tops saying that they predicted this market …

As we have held our annual planning meetings with clients I have been impressed by the power of having a plan. There is something about taking the time to reconnect with what is really important about money and projecting that into the future.

During the plan design and review process I …

The ideas behind the Behavior Gap had a very simple beginning as sketches on a white board. Here are the three that started it all:

Take a hard look at your investments. Do your real-life returns fall short of the rates …

There seems to be a considerable amount of concern about a rumor that Democratic Leaders in the U.S. House  are considering confiscating 401(k)s, and IRA. I received an email from a client that was rightfully concerned about what he read in the Carolina Journal Online.

From what I can gather, …

“…investors are more unstable that the economy…”

GOOD News: This Volatile October

I have been on a forced media fast for the last week. The non-stop coverage coming from the speculation industry forced me to do it. I turned off the TV, avoided the radio, stopped reading the news.

It has really become quite silly and totally unhealthy. Investments are LONG-TERM. If you …

Remember Long-Term Capital Management?

These were really smart folks.

Being really smart can lead to a high level of confidence in your decisions. Unfortunately history shows that being really smart can also lead to overconfidence.

But is not just really smart people who have this problem. If you think that we are not …

In some activities, it makes sense to scan the horizon for signals about how we should behave. If you are climbing, it makes sense to carefully watch for signals of a change in the weather that might require you to change your route or descend before you reach the summit …