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...
Vol 3, Issue 1. Quarter 1 - 2026. Many fans argue that The Godfather was the best movie ever made. I am not one who shares that view. However, there was a common role in the old gangster movies that always fascinated me. The "Consigliere" was the fellow who served as...
Vol 2, Issue 6. Quarter 4 - 2025. One underappreciated book on investor behavior is “The 5 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them” by Peter Mallouk. (See Mallouk, 2014.) But to be more specific, I often come back to one of his favorite lists – 9...
Vol 2, Issue 9. Quarter 4 - 2025. Before I begin to dig into too much data let’s set up a base case. You can take any and all money that you do not need to live off of today and invest it into a Global Stock Index Fund such as VTI. This is an extremely low cost index...
Vol 2, Issue 10. Quarter 4 - 2025. “What I want to talk about is Retail Options Trading; also known in some circles as degenerate gambling.” Ben Felix If you don't know who Ben Felix is, I highly recommend his Rational Reminder podcast (Rational Reminder) I am not...
Vol 2, Issue 9. Quarter 4 - 2025. I recently stumbled across a number of YouTube Videos with titles like, “Trading Options for Beginners,” and “Options Trading in 7 Minutes: How to Make $100 dollars a day,” and my new favorite, “Options Trading in 10 Minutes: How to...
Vol 2, Issue 8. Quarter 4 - 2025. When I was a child back in the 1970’s I would often overhear my mother speaking on the phone and sometimes I would hear the word “SHARP”, as in “girl, that was a sharp outfit”, or “he sure is a sharp dresser.” The work Sharp meant...