Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Spring Cleaning
Episode Date: March 25, 2016What's been the biggest surprise of 2016 so far? What's the big question our analysts have for the rest of 2016? And what happens when you take investment advice from a stock-picking, Hungarian ballet... dancer? Plus, Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig talks about his latest book, The Devil's Financial Dictionary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Chris Hill. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money.
Chris Hill. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money.
Chris Hill. It's the Motley Fool Money radio show. I'm Chris Hill. Joining me in studio
this week, for Million Dollar Portfolio, Jason Moser. For Million Dollar Portfolio and Supernova,
Matt Argersinger, and for Motley Fool Hidden Gems, Chief Investment Officer, Andy Cross.
Good to see you as always, gentlemen. It is our spring special episode of Motley Fool
Money. We've got an extended interview with Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Swig and
a very special edition of Stocks on Our Radar. But let's go around the table, guys. Let's
start with, we're a quarter of the way into 2016. Jason, rough start to 2016 for investors.
When you think back on the first quarter, what's your headline so far?
I mean, it was nice to see that things kind of snapped back a little bit for us,
but the one that just keeps on coming in droves here in the headlines is Valiant. I mean,
I can't really get over just the spate of bad news. They can't get out of their own
way. And what strikes me the most about this, now that their CEO has been ousted, is that
But somewhere, somebody thinks that actually Bill Ackman's the guy that can fix all this.
He's an investor, and that's great. But this guy, remember, he couldn't figure out JCPenney.
So, I don't know necessarily what makes him qualified to fix Valiant's problems. I mean,
Valiant does have problems. I think they're probably fixable at some point. I'm not sure
that Ackman's the guy to do that. But just an amazing fall from grace from a stock that
not too terribly long ago was really performing quite well.
Well, and the beauty with having almost 10% of the shares outstanding, you've got to set your rules.
That's what qualifies them.
I guess that's what qualifies them to some degree, which is the beauty of the shareholder model.
So, yeah, it's really embattled.
I mean, we'll see what he pulls out of his hat as far as he and the board with a new CEO.
Whatever it is, that new CEO has just a monster challenge ahead with when you think about the business model changing, the debt loads, and just the culture changing.
I mean, it's a totally different business going forward now.
Andy, what's your headline for 2016 so far?
Yeah, I agree with Jason. For me, it's really the market. The volatility that we saw in January was a disastrous month for so many investors.
Not one of our services was up in the month of January, and I think only one or two actually beat the market.
So, it was a really tough month for January, and now that's basically rebounded.
So, we see that volatility spiked up, which we saw a little bit last year near the end of December.
For me, that's the big story, and investors have to be expecting this going forward.
If they don't, or if they can't handle the volatility, they really have to think through
their investment strategy. O' Oily is dead. Long live oil.
That's less than a month ago, I think, we were looking at $20 oil. That's what everyone
was talking about. The amazing rebound we've seen, oil prices are up about 50%, and now
there are headlines that say, hey, oil's heading to $50 or $60 by the summer. So, it's just
a reminder to me about how fast sentiment can shift in the market, and why avoiding
headlines or the so-called smart pundits is your best weapon against being a foolish investor,
lowercase. You're saying it's nothing but sunny
days ahead for the oil and gas industry? I think that's the way the wind has shifted
there, Chris. Before we start looking ahead to the
rest of 2016, Jason, I'll just start with you. What surprised you in the last few months?
So, two things, I guess. No. 1, and we talked about this on MarketFoolery, was just
meerkats fall from grace from one year ago being the darling of SXSW to now basically
being dead. They almost don't exist.
A big splash with video streaming.
Yeah, it took live video streaming, really, that entire concept was something
that just lit up like a flame there at SXSW last year. Phenomenal, really, the potential
there. We saw Periscope come from that. Facebook is now jumping into that market there. But
Meerkat really just dwindled down to nothing. It showed you the value of distribution there.
I just was really surprised at how much I liked Zootopia. We went and saw Zootopia.
I see so many of those Disney movies where I just think, yeah, that'd be great, take
the kids, they'll be fine, they'll have a good time. But I become personally invested
in these movies, Chris. And it just, to me, is wow. Disney is a monster. Can't be stopped.
Andy, what surprised you so far this year?
Well, it's a continuation of the struggle of the hedge funds. If you look at the hedge
fund industry over the last couple of years, they've been just decimated, both in performance
and now we're seeing hedge funds close up shop at their most rapid pace that we've seen
since 2009. And so far in 2016, things haven't really improved. And when you think about
that bet Warren Buffett made against the hedge funds back in 2008, he bet that a very simple
investment in a low-cost index fund, the S&P 500, over the next 10 years would handily
out-beat the hedge funds. And a few hedge funds took him up on the challenge.
O' Why would you do that? What were they thinking? Why would you bet against
Warren Buffett in investing? It's interesting, if you listen to
them talk, they firmly believe that they could have won that bet, and that it was all about
However, when you think about what the markets have done, the market's up about 66% since
then, and the hedge funds are a third of that. So, so far, trailing probably won't win that
bet, and they continue to struggle. It's just really the power of monitoring your costs
and watching what you're paying for your investment advice, because it has such a huge impact
on your returns.
O' I think the biggest surprise for me was, up until now, the lack of merger and
acquisition activity in the market. If you think about it, interest rates are still at
historical lows. In fact, they've become negative in a lot of places. Corporations have a lot
of cash. Now, buybacks have been really popular, but at this point in the cycle, you'd expect
a really big pickup in M&A and activity. And I think we're actually starting to see that
now here towards the end of March, and I expect that to be picking up steam later this year.
You know, along those same lines, it's not that I expected IPOs to suddenly take
off in 2016, but the slowdown that we saw at the end of 2015 has gone to a near full
stop, to the point where you look at the private markets, and they want nothing to do with
IPOs, almost. Jason, before we get to the stocks on our radar, what's one big question
that you have as an investor when you think about the rest of 2016?
Yeah, we've seen a lot of news lately with Apple talking about different size phones,
other ways they're trying to become more relevant to consumers.
I feel like they are completely letting the connected home opportunity fly right by them.
I admittedly have an Echo in my house, and I've come to really love using it.
But I saw a tweet the other day that struck me.
It said, the iPod was to Apple as today's Echo is to Amazon.
And I think there is something to that.
But having used that device now for a little while, it's hands-free, it's very useful.
They come out with new updates every week. I get an email showing this thing that they
can do. I mean, you could even ask, Alexa, what's your final four? She's got a final
four, Chris. I mean, it's pretty amazing. But what struck me ...
Is it actually predictive, too? That'd be awesome.
Well, it could be.
Then they've got a real winner on their hands.
That's a smart home.
I think about this commercial I just saw with Apple, now Siri hands-free with
Cookie Monster, and it just smacks of almost wishing they could be as good as Echo, it's
still not. I just can't help but feel like Apple is letting this completely fly right
by them. Andy?
I'm watching Chipotle. I think it's widely followed, the full universe. We own it
in many of our services and have recommended it. And they have obviously really struggled.
It'll be interesting to see if they can get this ship right and start thinking through
how they're going to return to the kind of company they were before, fix the problems,
The comps this year are going to be terrible. Next year, those comp comparisons are going
to be much easier to come across. When you think about Chipotle as a long-term investment,
this could be really the good year to rethink about your doubling down on that position.
Emerging markets have just been butchered, not just this year, but in really
several years now, at least on a relative basis. I just think, stronger dollar, political
situation, macroeconomic situation, not good in a lot of places. So, capital has just poured
out of a lot of emerging markets and come to the U.S. I just feel like it might not
reverse this year, but I feel like it's going to start improving this year. We have a lot
of investments across Fulton and MDP in the emerging market space. I think that's going
to be a place, if you're an investor with a higher risk tolerance, it's a place to start
looking for opportunities. I'm going to throw one more out there,
which is, I saw a story earlier this week about how between the Summer Olympics, the
presidential election here in the U.S. Also, I think the Euro Cup later this year. An estimated
additional $6 billion is going to be spent in advertising and marketing. And I'm curious to
see if anyone other than the usual suspects is going to get a slice of that pie. We know Google
is going to get some of that money. We know Facebook is. But I'm just wondering if anyone
else can cut into that. It's time for the stocks on our radar. And in keeping with the spring
special. I'm going to ask for two stocks, Jason. One that you're a little bit more bullish
on, and in the spirit of spring cleaning, maybe a stock that needs to be vacated from
your portfolio or your watch list.
Jason Moser. Okay. Well, let's start with the bad news first. I'll go ahead with one
that I have already purged from my portfolio. I hate to say this, but it was LinkedIn. At
the end of January, I really had a lot of questions in regard to LinkedIn. The experience,
It seems like it's gotten very clunky and it's just an app that I'm just not quite sure
what they're trying to do with it. Spending a lot of money. I would really love to see
a bit more focus from them. I think it's a great concept, good management team. I think
it's a good business. I think that the stock has really probably been overly hit. I'm hopeful
that they'll turn things around. But right now, they have a lot of questions to answer
and the path to success isn't as clear as I think it once was.
Now, one where the path to success is abundantly more clear is in LA May. This is one I tabbed at
the very beginning of the year. We got an MDP recently. It's had a wonderful start of the year,
up about 40% so far. This is the lending software provider that ties into small lenders, big lenders,
and everywhere in between. Even though interest rates will be going up, I mean, what we have is
a business with tremendous barriers to entry, growing switching costs, pricing power, and
they really focus on doing one thing and doing it well. And there is a path to relationships
with big banks there in their compliance. I think that'll help drive the top line considerably
over the coming years. I think that's one to keep an eye on.
Let's go to our man, Steve Broido, behind the glass. Steve, question about either
LinkedIn or Ellie Mae?
Sure. My question is about LinkedIn. I'm a shareholder. Who else is competing
with them? They seem to own the entire job market right now.
It does. It seems like they do own that job market here domestically. Now,
there are some competitors internationally speaking. Maddy and I were talking about
one in Germany, for example. And I think that's really the question is,
it's still a big opportunity out there. Are they doing all they can to really stake their claim?
Andy Cross, what are you looking at?
The one I like is called Manhattan Associates, which is a $5 billion company, relatively small.
They play in the logistics place for warehouser, really benefiting from the push to omni-channel.
So whether you, consumer, are ordering things in the store, online, they help companies manage their warehouse and logistics.
It's a huge space, and they're one of the leaders of it.
Companies like Under Armour and other very well-regarded and well-followed retailers utilize them as the provider of that service.
I think it's a really dynamic, fun service to be involved in.
And spring cleaning?
SodaStream.
I've owned it.
I know many of our services have gotten rid of it.
I've still had it.
it. It's a very small position. It started small and got smaller. Unfortunately, they
have not been able to keep pace. It's one that probably has to go.
Steve, question about either SodaStream or Manhattan Associates?
Do you own a SodaStream personally, Andy?
I do not. That's one of the problems.
Matty, we've got about a minute left.
Sure. I'll start with the bad one first. Pandora. I won't sell as long as we own
it in Supernova, but I love the service. I listen to it every day. I just really have
serious questions about the business model now, with the cost that they have. Advertising
revenue and subscriptions just aren't making up the difference.
On the good side, I like TripAdvisor a lot. It's a company we own in a $1 million portfolio.
I'm looking at 350 million active monthly users. I'm looking at instant booking. I'm
looking at just a one-stop shop for everyone's travel needs. So, there you go.
O' Steve? Where should I go next?
Gosh, I think Hawaii. Because everyone I talk to at The Fool, including this guy,
Jason, has gone to Hawaii, and I haven't. I really want to go.
O' Second that. A bunch of stocks there, Steve. Any
catcher interest? TripAdvisor has come up many times
before, I might need to take a look at that one. All right. Jason Moser, Andy Cross, Matt Argersinger.
Guys, thanks for being here. Thanks, Chris. Up next, a conversation with award-winning columnist
Jason Zweig. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. For more than 25 years, Jason Zweig has
been covering business and investing. He writes the Intelligent Investor column for The Wall
Street Journal. He is the author of several books, and his latest is The Devil's Financial
Dictionary. He joins me now from New York City. Jason, thank you so much for being here.
Great to be with you, Chris.
The title of your book is a play off of The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. For those
of us who are either rusty in our knowledge of Ambrose Bierce or, frankly, have no idea who he
was, give me a quick snapshot. Sure. Ambrose Bierce was a close
contemporary of Mark Twain. He was born in 1842. He is believed to have died sometime around 1914.
which is a very interesting story in its own right.
You can Google it, Ambrose Bierce's death, and you'll be in for a treat.
He was one of America's greatest humorists, short story writers, and journalists.
And starting in the 1880s, going into the turn of the century, around 1905,
in bits and pieces he wrote what eventually he called the devil's dictionary which is probably
the greatest work of satire ever written in america and one of the greatest in world literature
in which he essentially made fun of every institutional aspect of american life and
culture, from politics to religion and the family, and all with this biting sense of humor and
incredibly sharp, beautifully written prose. And I really hope to do three things with this book.
One is I hope to entertain, and the other is I hope to educate or enlighten.
And the third is I hope maybe it'll introduce or reintroduce some readers to beers.
But above all, I'm really trying to educate, because I think if you can make people laugh, you can help them learn.
It's probably easier to learn if you laugh than any other way.
Well, there's definitely some fun stuff in the book, and we'll get to some of the definitions in a minute, but you touched on something which I think is certainly key when it comes to investing and Wall Street, and that is the role that jargon plays and the fact that there are very intelligent people, very accomplished people, doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc., who are very credentialed.
And yet, when it comes to investing, they are, in some ways, paralyzed, in part because of the jargon that is just thrown at them from Wall Street.
Yeah, it's a very important point, Chris.
And I think jargon in the financial industry has a particularly toxic aspect to it.
I mean, you mentioned doctors.
Think of it, for example, you go to your doctor's office and your doctor tells you you have some alarming sounding medical condition.
I don't know, you know, peritonitis of the peritoneum or something like that.
And you immediately freeze, your palms start to sweat.
But the first thing you'll say to your doctor is, what is that?
What does that mean?
And your doctor will explain it to you in terms you understand.
And if you have a good doctor, she'll explain it to you until she can tell you understand it.
But jargon in the financial industry works in a very different way.
There, the jargon is not meant to be precise the way jargon in science or medicine is.
It's meant to complicate what otherwise might either be simple or scary.
but furthermore it has this extra toxic effect which is when you hear it instead of saying what
is that what most people will do is they'll just nod because they want to be on the inside
they want to feel as if you know i'm an insider and so i know what a proprietary
leverage discount model is even though those words when you put them together don't really
mean anything at all other than the fact that the person who's saying them to you is is either
hiding something from you or pretending to know something that he doesn't really know
but by nodding and and sort of faking it yourself you make yourself feel as if you understand what's
being discussed when, in fact, you don't. And as soon as you nod, the person telling you about it
will stop explaining and will just deepen the jargon. So jargon in the financial industry is
sort of the step before getting beheaded.
Coming up, Jason Zweig talks day trading and Hungarian ballet dancers.
Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. Let's get back to my conversation with
Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig, author of The Devil's Financial Dictionary.
One of the themes that you touch on in the book, and this is something you've
written about before and talked about before, is just the role that luck plays in investing
and the way that it is not an odd occurrence, it is not by happenstance,
it is in fact a very fundamental force when it comes to investing.
Yeah, luck is huge, and it's huge for the same reason that it really matters in professional sports, for example.
And that's because at extraordinarily high levels of skill, like we have in the financial markets where professional investment managers are operating and competing against each other all day long,
And just as in a basketball game or a football game, the outcome, the deciding factor between
victory and loss is often just something as simple as which way the ball bounces or
a bad call by an umpire or an injury to a key player at a critical moment.
luck is hugely important in the financial markets because the differences in skill,
in level of skill among the players, can be very, very small. And so, you know, you get one
stock pick correct and, you know, you could be running a $10 billion hedge fund and you get one
wrong, and you go home. Let's get to some of the definitions in your book. The book is The Devil's
Financial Dictionary. Rumor, as defined in your book, the Wall Street equivalent of a fact.
Yeah, because I think that's really true. And, you know, if you look at what happens
in the financial markets, the rumor is actually much more valuable than the news.
Once the rumor starts to spread, it gets pulled into the price of the stock or the bond or
whatever else is being traded. And then when the fact, the actual news comes out,
It's almost like an afterthought.
The markets are incredibly good at acting on information.
And whether the information is true or false is almost beside the point.
It's really the speed of the action that matters rather than the direction.
Which leads to maybe my favorite definition, the phrase day trader, which you define as
see idiot.
Are you surprised at all that day trading is still something that people engage in?
Because on some level, I am.
I thought that it was a phase.
I thought it was something that with the rise of the internet that I guess I understood it when it started, Jason.
I don't understand why anyone would day trade now.
Well, Chris, what I often like to say is that people are too good at learning lessons.
And, you know, the lesson that people should have learned after the Internet bubble burst in early 2000 was day trading is a really bad idea.
But people are too good at learning lessons, so they learned an over-precise lesson.
And the lesson they learned was day trading Internet stocks is a really bad idea.
So, you know, in recent years, we've seen the same kinds of people who traded Internet stock, day traded Internet stocks, going into trading foreign currencies.
Now, why you would think, regardless of what you do for a living, that you would know more about the value of the yen relative to the euro than the people who work at the biggest financial firms in the world is beyond me.
You're listening to Motley Fool Money, talking with Jason Zweig from The Wall Street Journal.
His new book is The Devil's Financial Dictionary.
You know, investors have more access to more information than ever before.
And that can be a good thing.
That can be a bad thing.
And maybe a good example of that is Twitter.
You're on Twitter.
How do you think it helps investors?
How do you think it hurts them?
Well, I think Twitter is a fabulous example, Chris, because I think if you use it wisely,
it can be very beneficial. I think most people don't use it the way they should.
The single biggest danger any investor faces is overconfidence, coming to believe that you know
more about something than you do. And the biggest contributor to overconfidence is
something that psychologists call confirmation bias, which is the human tendency to
gather and pay attention to information that confirms the point of view you already hold.
And so what I think a lot of people do on Twitter is they follow people who agree with them because they agree with them.
And you essentially build this enormous amen corner in which all you're doing is sitting in an echo chamber of people telling you that you're right and everyone else is wrong.
and only the people who agree with this select community you've constructed
are possibly right about anything.
And if you use Twitter that way, you quickly become like a liberal
who only listens to or watches MSNBC
or a conservative who only watches Fox TV.
And I'm not making a political judgment on either side of the spectrum.
I'm just saying to be an intelligent, informed voter and citizen, you should be ingesting information that comes from all parts of the political spectrum, not just from people you agree with politically.
And the same is true as an investor or just as an intelligent thinking citizen.
You should seek out as many people who will challenge your most cherished beliefs as you possibly can find.
And that's what Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger will tell you has been the secret to their success.
They don't try to prove their beliefs before they invest in a stock or another asset.
They try to disprove their assumptions.
And it's only after they've tested their beliefs that they're willing to act on them.
You have an interesting background because you don't really have the traditional financial background.
You studied art in college.
It's not like you went to work for a big Wall Street bank.
But I did read that you bought your first stock when you were 16 years old.
So I'm curious about the art major in college.
But first, what drew you to stock investing when you were a teenager?
Yeah, so my parents were business people.
um uh they they actually uh first ran a a community newspaper in ohio and connecticut
and after they got out of the newspaper business they became um uh antique dealers
and so i had always uh heard business discussed um deals were always going on
and um i was i was interested in the stock market as a sort of laboratory for human nature
you know observing sort of the extremes of fear and greed and when i was in high school in 10th
grade i read a book called how i made two i think it was two million dollars in the stock market
by a Hungarian ballet dancer named Nicholas Darvish.
And this book once was very popular.
It was a huge bestseller in the 1960s and 70s.
To the best of my knowledge today,
just about everything in the book was sheer nonsense.
So wait, you're telling me that a Hungarian ballet dancer
doesn't have advanced training in investing?
I'm telling you that a Hungarian ballet dancer wrote a best-selling book on how to become rich in the stock market
and became rich, I think, from writing that book.
I doubt he became rich from what he did in the stock market.
But so I found it quite compelling as a 10th grader.
I don't think I would today.
and um so i i practiced his method it involved you know drawing charts and tracking price and
volume and and a stock appealed to me on that basis and i bought it and um i immediately made
about a 30 or 35 profit in in a matter of days and it was enormously exciting to me
and then um of course this was in the days when you had to telephone your human stock broker
and place an order and then wait until the end of the trading day to get a phone call back
that your trade had been filled and then a week later you would get a trade confirmation in the
mail showing you all the details about the transaction. And where we lived on a farm
in northern New York State, I had to wait a week to find out what the stock did during the week
because our local paper didn't have daily stock tables. And I ended up making about a 50 percent
profit overall in the course of a month or two. And I was very fortunate because I got
intensely interested in other things. And I forgot all about it for years and years on end.
Because what usually happens to people in that situation is they make money. And then they think
they know what they're doing and they repeat and they end up losing their shirts. I was very
fortunate that I rolled the dice once and lost interest and only came back to it later.
I was going to say that it's pretty striking that you attribute as much as you do to luck,
because that's what I was thinking when you were telling that story, that a lot of people in that
situation, their takeaway would be, I'm amazing at picking stocks. Yeah, and, you know, it was
sheer dumb luck. It turned out that the stock I bought, which meant nothing to me, was turned
into the takeover vehicle that the, today we would call him an activist investor, that Ron
Perlman was using to strike it big on Wall Street. And I was there at the very start without even
knowing I was. And it was complete luck. And the luckiest thing of all is that I quickly became
more interested in other things. That's, I guess, one of the good things about being a teenager is
you have a short attention span.
Coming up, the biggest change in Jason Zweig's thinking about the stock market.
Stay right here.
This is Motley Fool Money.
Money's too tight to mention. I can't give an unemployment extension. Money's too tight to mention.
Can't buy me love, love.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill, and you're listening to my recent interview with Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig, author of The Devil's Financial Dictionary.
In your career, you have covered the crash of 1987, the dot-bomb era, the Great Recession of 2008-2009.
You have seen and covered a lot.
What has been the biggest shift in your thinking about investing over your career?
Well, I think overall, the biggest shift has been that for most investors, I don't think the effort to try to beat the market is worth the trouble.
Now, I would immediately say that I think if anyone can beat the market, it's much more likely to be small investors than large ones.
I think big institutional investors like mutual funds, and for that matter, many hedge funds, have enormous obstacles to overcome that individuals don't.
For one thing, it's far cheaper for an individual investor to buy a stock than it is for an
institution.
It's one of the only things in all of modern life to be cheaper retail than wholesale.
Just about everything else is the opposite, but it's cheaper to buy stocks retail than
it is to buy them wholesale, and it's a lot cheaper.
And that's a huge advantage.
The other thing is individuals can set their own time horizon.
They can measure their success by their own benchmarks instead of by what other people think.
And those are huge advantages.
But whether you should attempt to beat the market or not, I think, is largely a function of your own temperament.
if you're the kind of person ben graham called an enterprising investor somebody who's willing
to put in the time and effort and energy and commitment necessary to do the homework
then i think attempting to beat the market is a really worthwhile endeavor
You will learn a lot.
You very well might succeed in your effort.
You will be engaged.
It will make you a more thoughtful, probably intelligent person.
It will hone your decision-making skills.
And you might even succeed.
But most people probably aren't enterprising in the Ben Graham definition.
They're more what he called defensive.
They have better things to do with their time. And I used to be very doctrinaire about this and
sort of tell people, here's the kind of person you should be. And instead, I think people should
decide for themselves, who am I? You know, am I willing to put in that time and effort
to try to beat the market? In which case, there are a lot of sensible approaches I could take.
Or do I have things I'd rather do with my time?
Would I rather play with my kids?
Would I rather watch a movie?
Would I rather go to the park?
And if you're that kind of person, then you should just buy an index fund and feel no
shame or compunction about it.
There's no reason why anyone should be embarrassed by that.
Last question, and then I'll let you go.
a lot of people turn to you when they're looking for insight on investing and the stock market.
Who do you turn to when you're looking for insight on investing in the stock market? It can be
writers that you enjoy reading. It could be people that you follow on Twitter.
Yeah, well, there's a bunch of people. You know, the first thing everybody should do is,
is, of course, read Benjamin Graham's book or books, The Intelligent Investor or Security
Analysis. If you're ambitious, it's a longer book. If you haven't read all of Warren Buffett's
letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, which are all freely available online,
your investing education is far from complete, I think I would say.
And another investor who writes great letters is named Howard Marks, M-A-R-X,
who is the chairman of Oak Tree, which is a large investment manager in Los Angeles.
And his letters are terrific.
And then there are a bunch of people on Twitter who are great
and a bunch of sort of aggregation services.
There's a website called Abnormal Returns, which is terrific.
um it's a kind of curator site that pulls together everything interesting that's been
posted in the past couple days um uh the bogle heads website is great people who follow the
vanguard founder john bogle um efficient frontier by william bernstein i think the other site i
would mention is Farnham Street, F-A-R-N-A-M, which is run by Shane Parrish. It's a great place
to go to sharpen your thinking. Those are certainly some of the resources I rely on.
Every year, the Gerald Loeb Awards honor the best in business and financial journalism.
It is the highest honor for a business writer. And in 2013, the Award for Personal Finance went
to Jason Zweig. His new book is The Devil's Financial Dictionary. Jason, thank you so much
for being here. Thanks for having me, Chris. That's going to do it for this week's show.
To win your own investing library, go to podcasts.fool.com. That's podcasts.fool.com.
Our engineer is Steve Broido. Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next week.
