Vol 3, Issue 13. Quarter 3 - 2026. Apparently, it is absolutely necessary for me to define one of the simplest ideas that I can even think of – the humble average. I say this because I so often hear people speak as though they have no idea what an average is. Let’s...
Vol 3, Issue 12. Quarter 2 - 2026. Consider the human side of the thief. Let’s look at the story of a short guy from Brooklyn. Just for fun let’s call him Ernie. Ernie is a young investment analyst looking to start his own asset management business, handling...
Vol 3, Issue 12. Quarter 2 - 2026. There is a little fear monster that lives in the back of your skull. I suspect that right about now he is saying something like: “The stock market is at an all-time high and what goes up must come down – so this is a good time to...
Vol 3, Issue 10. Quarter 2 - 2026. Golda Meir was the first female Prime Minister of Israel in the late 1960’s. She is famous for many things including the quote, “Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.” This is a common call out when someone is pretending to be...
Vol 3, Issue 9. Quarter 2 - 2026. I was recently reminded about a short lesson for children that I saw on PBS many years ago. As best I can recall, Lavar Burton rode a bicycle with the aid of the wind for 20 miles at a speed of 20 miles per hour. After a short rest,...
In retirement planning we are routinely advised about how to deal with two major sources of uncertainty. How long we will live in retirement, and market returns over that period of time. All manner of simulations, fancy calculus, and varied means of projections are...
Vol 3, Issue 7. Quarter 2 - 2026. Every so-called retirement expert will go on and on about how to use a Roth Conversion strategy to avoid the demons of Required Minimum Distributions (RMD’s), and IRMAA surcharges. The sales pitch is that by having to take these RMD’s...
Vol 3, Issue 6. Quarter 2 - 2026 There is a pretty good chance that you never heard of SPIVA – which stands for “S&P Indices Versus Active.” In particular, you should look into the SPIVA scorecards which are updated twice per year at...
Vol 3, Issue 5. Quarter 2 - 2026. Go to your favorite search engine and type in “Retirement Spending Rules”. After you scroll past all of the vendors explicitly trying to sell you some service, you will see entries about “The 4% Rule”, the “3.5% Rule”, “Guyton-Klinger...
Vol 3, Issue 4. Quarter 2 - 2026 This is an old one from a book of short stories on Zen Buddhism, but it bears hearing again. A farmer works a piece of land with a single horse. One day the horse runs away. His neighbors come around to commiserate the incident and cry...
Vol 3, Issue 3. Quarter 2 - 2026. We interrupt this program to bring you an important message that will really tick a lot of people off. Many investors, and especially retirees love to talk about how they live off of dividends, and how this is the clear answer to the...
Vol 3, Issue 12. Quarter 2 - 2026. Imagine it’s 1950. You’re 65, your back is ruined from thirty years in a coal mine or a textile mill, and your "retirement plan" consists of a small Social Security check and the hope that your children have a spare bedroom. In 1950,...
Vol 3, Issue 11. Quarter 2 - 2026. Turn on the financial media, and every CEO is bragging about their "AI integration" and "agentic workflows," whatever the hell that means. They are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to implement AI-based tools. But here is the...
Vol 3, Issue 9. Quarter 1 - 2026. In October of 2025 a research group at Vanguard published their annual US Retirement Outlook which included ample commentary on readiness among those near retirement today. The full title of the report was, “The Vanguard Retirement...
Vol 3, Issue 8. Quarter 1 - 2026. I recently ran across a bit of the usual alarmist financial “News” that caught my eye. This particular piece was screaming that “the government is going to eliminate 401K accounts.” Aside from the fact that this is political suicide...
Vol 3, Issue 7. Quarter 1 - 2026. As a Professor of Operations Management I am often reminded of the huge contributions of Andrey Markov. (Who the hell is that?) Markov was a Russian mathematician who dedicated most of his professional life to the study of stochastic...
Vol 3, Issue 6. Quarter 1 - 2026. According to the National Institute for Retirement Security (NIRS), “The average American worker has less than $1,000 saved for retirement.” If you want to be more precise, the number they come up with is $955. This is reported in...
Vol 3, Issue 5. Quarter 1 - 2026. One of the most famous debaters at ESPN had a silly phrase that he likes to use. “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it ain’t a damn mongoose!” There is a fairly new product in the “investment” world...
Vol 3, Issue 2. Quarter 1 - 2026. Let’s begin with a few obvious facts. It is better to have something and not need it, than to need something and not have it. Money doesn’t buy happiness – but it rents a lot that is awfully darn close. The “scholars” telling you that...
Vol 3, Issue 3. Quarter 1 - 2026. There is a collection of ideas floating around known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), or Modern Money Theory. The major conclusion of this so-called “New” theory is that a country that issues debt in its own currency, while...