We are twins separated at birth. I had the same philosophy when I was hyper-accumulating (TRIPLE TWINS). I think MMM and Jacob Lund Fisker both wrote about how having a high savings rate is much more important than investment returns. the best is do both... a high savings rate is you working for yo...

when you take typical accumulation periods which span decades you would be betting against that house that the winner won't be equities so a long term investor who is mitigating temporary dips would likely have no financial logic to it .. typical periods run 25-40 years ... so mentally , sure it ma...

It seems like stock buybacks should be allowed as long as they’re done with excess capital, i.e., not with borrowed funds. In a sense, stock buybacks are the opposite of issuing new stock. Companies issue new stock to raise capital, so the opposite activity (buying back shares) should be done to dr...

It's also worth noting that stock buybacks were illegal prior to 1982. Yeah, I actually just learned that a few weeks ago. I wasn't aware it was ever banned. But yeah, some politicians are moving to ban it again because they think it's unethical to allow executives to raid their companies balance s...

In other words, my assumption that companies only do share buybacks when they have surplus capital was apparently incorrect. Interesting. Follow-up question: What is the likely thought process of a corporate executive who borrows money to buy back shares? Is the idea that unless the shareholders se...

Jesse Felder released a blog post today that in a lot of ways touches on some of the things we've been discussing here: https://thefelderreport.com/2019/04/24/the-perils-of-pursuing-monetary-policy-that-explicitly-makes-the-economy-reliant-on-bubbles/?utm_source=Subscribers&utm_campaign=b6f49e7949-E...

Try Google sheets. I was a C++ programmer too and always thought spreadsheets were complicated, especially one written by a company like Microsoft who "excels" at complicating things. Google sheets is a lot simpler IMHO. Microsoft has gotten a lot better in the last few years. My most proficient ba...

realistically for a long term investor , mitigating temporary short term dips with assets that will permanently lower long term returns has little financial logic to it ...but if it keeps them from bad investor behavior then great . all these other assets are what we use when we have time constrain...

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4250756-buybacks-making-market-look-cheaper ^ wrong? If the only metric someone looks at is P/E, then yes it does make the market look cheaper than it is. I think an argument could be made that over the last 10 years buybacks alone are the main reason for the U.S. o...

It's easy to decide to take capital gains when you get to do it at the 0% rate, but things get trickier if you're subject to the 15% rate. What if in future you expect to have a window where you can take the gains at a 0% rate? You'd be missing out on that not to mention the power of tax deferral. ...

Hint #2: Gross vs. net corporate debt. Credit card analogy #2: My credit card debt is up 10 fold again, darn it! Going from $100 to 1000 and I have 100K in STTs. Do I have a debt problem? Have you examined a chart of corporate profits to GDP? Surprise...also at historical highs. Look away folks, no...

Everyone loves Dalio's video but im not sure yet. How does he come up with "typically 50 years" for a long term cycle. The world changes a lot over 50 year spans. We had a soft landing after the tech bubble. If it was even a "bubble", we didnt know how tech would pan out. Predicting the future is h...