Watch Your Mouth — On Morningstar Advisor

02.16.2010

At the Morningstar Advisor Blog, I wrote a piece called Watch Your Mouth about the need for advisors to think about the terms we use. Many are incomprehensible to our clients. There’s a growing desire for simplicity, and as advisors we need to figure out language that clarifies what we’re doing instead of confusing the [...]

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Where I’ve Been

02.08.2010

Never fear—I haven’t forgotten you. Things have been busy at the Behavior Gap in unexpected and exciting ways. I’ve been invited to post on a regular basis at the New York Times Bucks blog. As you can see from the screen shot below, the post made the home page this morning. You can read the [...]

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Slow & Steady: Winning the Investment Race

12.15.2009

I know that this is not a new idea; we have all heard the story of the tortoise and the hare since we were little. Slow and steady always wins the race, but it is so easy to forget when most of what we read in the financial press is written to sell magazines: slow [...]

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Finding A Financial Planner You Can Trust

11.16.2009

A while back, I needed minor surgery. I needed a surgeon, so I called a client who is a physician and asked him who I should see. He referred me to someone he thought would be just right for the job.
I went to see her, and everything was just as I expected. She told me [...]

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Investors Make Mistakes, Not Investments

11.12.2009

After spending a week answering questions on the New York Times Bucks blog, and all the side discussions that generated, I am more convinced than ever that all investment mistakes are really investor mistakes.
For the most part [fraud being a notable exception], investments don’t make mistakes, investors do.
This reminds me of the time that I was [...]

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When Should You Invest Your Million

11.04.2009

Let’s say you have recently received $1,000,000 unexpectedly that you have somehow determined should be invested in the stock market for the long-term.
When should you invest it? Should it all go in as soon as you get it [lump sum] or should you space it out over 6-12 months [dollar-cost averaging]?
This is a classic behavioral [...]

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