Motley Fool Money - Spring Cleaning

Episode Date: March 25, 2016

What'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

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 If you're a small business owner, you already know what it takes to keep everything moving. You're juggling customers, invoices, and about 100 decisions every day. Thankfully, taxes don't have to be one more thing on that list. With Intuit TurboTax, you can get your business taxes done for you with a full service expert. TurboTax matches you with your dedicated tax expert. Who knows your industry understands your business write-offs and gives you the personalized advice your business deserves. upload your documents right in the app, hand everything off, and still feel like you're in the loop the whole way through. You can even get real-time updates on your expert's progress right in the
Starting point is 00:00:42 app, which makes it so much easier to stay on track. And you can get unlimited expert help at no extra cost, even on nights and weekends during tax season. Visit turbotax.com to get matched with an expert today, only available with TurboTax full service experts. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. The best thing they'll live for, but you can get them to the press. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Fool Money Radio Show. I'm Chris Allen, joining me in studio this week for million dollar portfolio, Jason Moser, for Million Dollar Portfolio and Supernova, Matt Argusinger,
Starting point is 00:01:27 and from Motley Fool Hidden Jems, Chief Investment Officer Andy Cross. Good to see you, as always, gentlemen. Hey, hey, hey. 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?
Starting point is 00:01:56 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 and it just 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 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 J.C. Penny. 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 got to do that, but just an
Starting point is 00:02:42 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. It's a totally different business going forward now. Andy, what's your headline for 2016 so far? Yeah, I agree with Jason. The you
Starting point is 00:03:21 shaped, for me, it's really the market. The volatility that we saw in January, which is a, I mean, 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. 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. Maddie?
Starting point is 00:03:51 Oil is dead. Long live oil. You know, that's less than a month ago. I think we were looking at $20 oil. That's what everyone was talking about. And just the amazing rebound we've seen, oil prices are up about 50%. And now there are headlines that say, you know, we're, hey, we're oil's 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?
Starting point is 00:04:22 I think that's the way things are, that's the way the wind is 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. Number one, and we talked about this on Market Fullery, was just merecats fall from grace from one year ago being the darling of South by Southwest to now basically being dead. I mean, 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
Starting point is 00:04:57 lit up like a flame there. It's South by Southwest last year. And just phenomenal, really, the potential there. We saw a Periscope come from that. Facebook is not jumping into that market there, but Mirkat really just, you know, dwindled down nothing. It shows you the value of distribution there. And then really, I just was really surprised at how much I liked Zootopia. We went and saw Zootopia that. I see so many of those Disney movies where I just think, yeah, that'd be great. Take the kids and 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. Like, I just, Disney, Disney is a monster.
Starting point is 00:05:33 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 of the last couple years, they've been just decimated, both in performance. And now we're seeing hedge funds close up shop, the 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,
Starting point is 00:05:56 He bet that a very simple investment in a low-cost index fund, the S&P 500, over the next 10 years, would handily outbeat the hedge funds. And a few hedge funds took them up on the challenge. Why would you do that? What were they thinking? Why would you bet against Warren Buffett in investing? You listen to them talk, they firmly believe that they could have won that bet, and it was all about timing. However, when you think about what the markets have done and the markets up about 66% of the market. since then and the hedge funds are a third of that. So, so far, trailing, probably won't
Starting point is 00:06:31 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. Mattie? 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, the size, the
Starting point is 00:06:56 cycle, you would have expected 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. Complete vacuum. 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
Starting point is 00:07:31 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 mean, this, I admittedly have an echo in my house. 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.
Starting point is 00:08:03 And I think there is something to that. 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?
Starting point is 00:08:22 Is it actually predictive, too? That'd be awesome. It could be. Then they got a real win on their hand. 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 like wishing they could be as good as Echo. It's still not.
Starting point is 00:08:39 I just can't help to feel like Apple is letting this completely fly right by him. 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 will be interesting to see if they can get the ship right. and start thinking through how they're going to return to the kind of company they were before,
Starting point is 00:09:00 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 in that position. You know, emerging markets have just been butchered, not just this year, but in really several years now, at least on a relative basis. And I just think, you know, a 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 kind of come to the U.S. And I just feel like it might not reverse this year, but I feel like it's going to start improving this year. And we have a lot
Starting point is 00:09:37 of investments across Fulham and MDP in the emerging market space. And 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 saw a story earlier this week, about how between the Summer Olympics, the presidential election, here, you know, and I'm going to throw 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
Starting point is 00:10:13 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. OK. Well, let's start with the bad news first. And I'll go ahead with one that I have already purged from my portfolio.
Starting point is 00:10:44 And 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. 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, and 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, and I think that the stock has really probably been overly hit. I'm hopeful that they'll turn things around, but right now I'm really, they have a lot of questions to answer,
Starting point is 00:11:14 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 L.E. May. This is one I tapped at the very beginning of the year. We got into MDP recently. It's had a wonderful start of the year, up about 40 percent 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 engine.
Starting point is 00:11:56 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 Brodow, 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.
Starting point is 00:12:12 It does. It seems like they do own that job market here domestically. Now, there are some competitors international. Additionally speaking, Maddie 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 small, a $5 billion company, relatively
Starting point is 00:12:32 small, and 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 logistics provider. 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? So to stream. I've owned it. I know many of our services have gotten rid of it. I've still had it. It's a very small position, started small and got
Starting point is 00:13:10 smaller, unfortunately, I just have not been able to keep pace. It's one that probably has to go. Steve, question about either SOTA stream or Manhattan Associates? Do you own a SOTA personally, Andy? I do not. That's one of the problems. Maddie, we've got about a minute left. Sure, I'll start with a bad one first. Pandora. I won't sell as long as we own it in Supernova, but it's just, I love the service. I mean, I listen to it every day. I just really have serious questions about the business model now with the cost that they have. Advertising
Starting point is 00:13:37 revenue subscriptions just aren't making up the difference. On the good side, I like TripAdvisor a lot. It's a company we own a million dollar 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. Steve? Where should I go next? Gosh. I think Hawaii, because everyone I talked to with The Fool, including this guy, Jason, has gone to Hawaii. And I haven't. I really want to go. A bunch of stocks there. Steve, any catch your interest?
Starting point is 00:14:04 TripAdvisor has come up many times before. I may need to take a look at that one. All right. Jason Moser, Andy Cross. Matt Argus. singer, 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 Full Money. I'm Chris Hill. For more than 25 years, Jason Zweig has been covering business and investing.
Starting point is 00:14:27 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 Beers. For those of us who are either rusty in our knowledge of Ambrose Beers or, frankly, have no idea who he was.
Starting point is 00:14:51 Give me a quick snapshot. Sure. Ambrose Beers 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 Beers' 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,
Starting point is 00:15:35 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 incredibly sharp, beautifully written prose. I really hope to do three things with this book. One is I hope to entertain. 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.
Starting point is 00:16:30 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,
Starting point is 00:17:09 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
Starting point is 00:18:10 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, well, 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 either hiding something, something from you or pretending to know something that he doesn't really know. But by nodding
Starting point is 00:19:10 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 the step before I'm getting beheaded. Coming up, Jason Zweig talks day trading and Hungarian ballet dancers. Stay right here. This is Motley Full Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money.
Starting point is 00:19:55 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, 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 isn't that it really matters in example.
Starting point is 00:20:34 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. 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,
Starting point is 00:21:38 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.
Starting point is 00:22:24 And then when the fact, the actual news comes out, it's almost like an afterthought. The markets are incredibly good acting on information. And whether the information is true or false is almost bad. 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 C, 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
Starting point is 00:23:17 anyone would day trade now well Chris what I 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 in early 2000 was day trade 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
Starting point is 00:24:16 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 Full Money talking with Jason Swag 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?
Starting point is 00:24:46 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. you know, the one of the biggest, 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.
Starting point is 00:25:42 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
Starting point is 00:26:34 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
Starting point is 00:27:34 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. They actually first ran a community newspaper in Ohio and Connecticut, and after they got out of the newspaper business, they became antique dealers.
Starting point is 00:28:20 and so I had always heard business discussed, deals were always going on. I was interested in the stock market as 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, I think it was $2 million in the stock market. by a Hungarian ballet dancer named Nicholas Darvis. And this book once was very popular. It was a huge bestseller in the 1960s and 70s.
Starting point is 00:29:09 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 and 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. So I found it quite compelling as a 10th grader. I don't think I would today.
Starting point is 00:29:47 So I practiced his method. It involved, you know, drawing, charge. and tracking price and volume and a stock appealed to me on that basis, and I bought it. And I immediately made about a 30 or 35 percent profit in a matter of days. And it was enormously exciting to me. And then, of course, this was in the days when you had to telephone your human stockbroker 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
Starting point is 00:30:34 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% 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. 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.
Starting point is 00:31:33 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.
Starting point is 00:32:30 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 Full Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. I'm Chris Hill, and you're listening to my recent interview with Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig,
Starting point is 00:33:21 author of The Devil's Financial Dictionary. In your career, you have come. 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, 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.
Starting point is 00:34:38 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, energy, and commitment necessary to do the homework, then I think attempting to beat the market is a really worthwhile endeavor.
Starting point is 00:35:42 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. So 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 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
Starting point is 00:36:44 movie? Would I rather, you know, 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.
Starting point is 00:37:19 Yeah, well, there's a bunch of people. people. You know, the first thing everybody should do 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. think I would say. And another investor who writes great letters is named Howard Marks, who's the chairman of Oak Tree, which is a large investment manager in Los Angeles, and his letters are terrific.
Starting point is 00:38:08 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. It's a kind of curator site that pulls together everything interesting that's been posted in the past couple days. The Boglehead's website is great, the people who follow the Vanguard founder, John Bogle. 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.
Starting point is 00:38:59 Those are certainly some of the resources I rely on. Every year the Gerald Loeb Awards honored 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... 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 podcast.fool.com. That's podcast.com. Our engineer is Steve Broido. Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.