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The state of relations between the US and China--and even more so, financial journalism's narrative thereof--are steadily becoming, as Alice said, curiouser and curiouser....keep reading

Peter Buger, Edward R. Lazear...keep reading

In the Book of Genesis, God gives Adam and Eve dominion over all the earth, forbidding them only from tasting the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. And for a moment, their innocence is perfect....keep reading

Q: An extended segment on "60 Minutes" last night made much of the "fact" that
A:Intellectually, you've answered your own question, by correctly observing that...keep reading

February 2022...keep reading

December 2025...keep reading

Thank you for your enthusiastic response to last month's announcement of a second Behavioral Strategies Conference,...keep reading

A fair number of mildly interesting things happened in and around the financial world on Thursday, November 12--a day chosen, for the purposes of this essay, entirely at random....keep reading

Ask Nick...keep reading

Q: My mentor is retiring from the business after a very successful 46 year career. ...
A: You almost certainly can't. Build your own book your own way....

Q: My question revolves around the actual presentation of the mutual fund. I do ...
A: I cringe to remember it, but: yes, my first book about mutual funds (Serious ...

Q: If it were up to me, I would have zero variable annuities in my book of ...
A: I have to confess that I have no idea how annuity compensation to the FA ...

Q: our article last month "Rebecca's Riverkeepers" touched on an issue that ...
A: The long philosophical answer is that if parents fear that affluence/inheritance ...

Q: I think I understand how interest rates affect bonds, but I'm less clear on how ...
A: It's not just low rates in a vacuum: it's the tidal wave of excess liquidity that is ...

Q: I have run into three clients or prospects who have expressed to me concern ...
A: If you're missing so...keep reading

Ask Nick...keep reading

Ask Nick...keep reading

1. By far the best, most complete and most dramatic account yet of the BP disaster in the Gulf last year...
2. Michael Boskin, who was chairman of the senior Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, wrote an exceptionally...
3. Reader Jason Sherr passed along Wells Fargo's background piece "Why Invest In Stocks."...
4. Upwards of a year ago, Marilyn Cohen, the Los Angeles money manager and bond columnist for Forbes...
5. I was lavish in my praise of "The Super-Cycle Report" by Standard Chartered's Gerard Lyons last month--
6. Oil is pushing toward $100 a barrel again, so we may expect shortly to hear the usual howls of execration ...

With the unpleasantness in equity prices over the last year or so, there's been a predictable increase in my e-mail traffic from advisors who ask, "How can I try to keep older people in equities without exposing myself to the 'inevitable' lawsuit?"...keep reading

Ask Nick...keep reading

Getting a satisfactory flow of referrals isn't a skill, much less a technique. It's a feedback loop...keep reading

Q:The question I am now repeatedly getting with a lot of intensity is how can the ...
A:I hardly know where to begin. How can there be "any hope for the equity ...

Q:Please guide me in helping clients see the weakness of getting out of the ...
A:Gold is a mildly efficient long-term inflation hedge; an ounce of gold bought a ...

Q: I am now getting questions from clients regarding the ideology of the current ...
A:These and the whole panoply of "road to socialism" objections are ...

Q:1. How do I tell the difference between a prospect who just "thinks" they want ...
A:(1) You always know. You suppress your own instincts, in the desire for the ...

Q:I'm on my third read-through of Behavioral Investment Counseling, and am ...
A:Your first and greatest mistake--which you deliberately, consciously made in ......keep reading

Q: What is the kindest, most compassionate way to say to a prospect--when ...
A: I don't believe there is such a statement. I'd recommend the Socratic method: ...

Q: Got a request from a close friend. Wants me to look at a 20-page proposal his ...
A: Reply gently that you wouldn't ever do that. It would be like a doctor rendering ...

Q: A disturbing number of clients are mouthing the latest iteration of the "buy and ...
A: My pleasure. (1) The phenomena to which you refer are noise. The idea that ...

Q: A colleague and friend has fallen ill, and will apparently be unable to return to ...
A: Go in a room with your attorney, your colleague's attorney and your ...

...keep reading

1. I seem stupidly to have neglected, as I waxed rhapsodic last month about Legg Mason's ...
2. Quite the best, clearest, most economical way of getting up to speed on the shale gas revolution ...
3. I said a moment ago that Yergin's The Prize is the one...
4. One would have to be a hopeless economics geek to say that...
5. Steven Pressfield has just released a follow-on to his classic The War of Art...
6. As I suggested earlier in this edition, with my cycle of three books complete, ...

1. I can never think of my friend Joe Jordan without remembering how Jimmy Breslin described...
2. The Davis Funds' "Widsom of Great Investors" brochure, which is the source of updated...
3. The director of the dreadful documentary film Inside Job began his Oscar acceptance rant by...
4. It was the next best thing to a Jimmy Carter moment. I refer...