Risk
Markets
+2
Dec 6, 2025
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5 min read
On Doing the Right Thing
Against all odds, 2025 is almost history. And the lesson? It's always the right time to do the right thing—never a better or worse moment. That simple truth guided me through April's chaos, when Jason Zweig at The Wall Street Journal asked me what investors should do. The answer: prioritize doing no harm, manage regret risk, don't panic into something worse. Life must go on, even in uncertainty. That was the work this year. It will be again in 2026.
Markets
+2
Oct 11, 2025
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7 min read
Fear Moves Markets. Keep It From Moving You.
Risk is structured and manageable—we measure it, bear it, diversify it, or hedge it. Fear is a mess. It's psychological, contagious, and arational. Risk doesn't keep you up at night. Fear does. The good news: words and scenarios aren't dangerous, they're rehearsal. We can pre-think contingencies, set simple rules for stress, and keep fear from scheduling our actions. My conversation with Rob Arnott and Ed McQuarrie explores why fear—not risk—explains asset pricing, and how to put fear where it belongs.
Markets
+2
Sep 27, 2025
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6 min read
What Makes an Alternative Investment: My Conversation with Jane Buchan
An alternative investment diversifies beyond mainstream assets—simple enough. But some alts are mature (private equity), some are young adults (private credit), and some are adolescents (crypto). What people forget: volatility isn't the only risk. Jurisdiction and custody matter just as much. You could've bought Bitcoin at $1,000 and watched it hit $100,000—except if you stored it at Mt. Gox, which got hacked in 2014. That's a 100% loss, not a 9,900% gain. My conversation with Jane Buchan on what really matters when stepping into alt land.
Markets
+2
Sep 13, 2025
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7 min read
Fun Time is Over
For over a year, you could earn 5% on Treasury bills, pay your taxes, and still beat 3% inflation. You could move resources through time and grow wealth with little risk. T-Bill and Chill worked. Now? One-year Treasuries are at 3.7%. After taxes, you're at 2.3%. Inflation is 2.7%. Your wealth is a slow-melting iceberg. Fun time is over. But knee-jerk reactions can bite you just as hard as ignoring reality. Make sure your next move is strategic, not emotional. Plus: my conversation with Michael Imerman on the economics of FinTech.
Markets
+2
Aug 2, 2025
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12 min read
Apres Nous, Le Deluge
The Europe-U.S. "trade deal" isn't really about trade. It's Europe being pragmatic—giving on trade terms to get military support against Russia. They're buying American weaponry with strong Euros and opening markets to U.S. goods in exchange for pressure on Putin. It's protection money, essentially. Europe is buying time against electoral cycles and a tired regime sending young men to die. Meanwhile, stock markets are hitting new highs, which shows you really don't know what happens next. This wealth-management thing is centrally about managing risk and minimizing regrets. Stress-testing your comfort with the disconnect between market strength and exposed fault lines doesn't seem like a bad idea right now.
Markets
+2
Apr 26, 2025
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13 min read
A Little Perspective Goes a Long Way
April was brutal—stock swings, dollar falling, Treasury yields spiking. People worry American Exceptionalism is melting away. But look at the data: Treasury yields are elevated, sure, around the 75th percentile since 2000, not off the charts. The dollar weakened but it's not broken—Euro at 1.15 isn't crazy, Yen at 140 is a drop from 160 but still reasonable. The U.S. economy entered 2025 in exceptional shape. Yes, headlines suggest tectonic shifts. The numbers tell a more nuanced story—we're still within historical ranges. This is a time for extreme thinking, not extreme actions. Understand your exposures now.
Markets
+2
Apr 12, 2025
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12 min read
Good Grief
April 2, 2025 belongs to the list of days we'll remember—Berlin Wall, 9/11, Lehman, Brexit. Tariffs imposed, markets cratered, then the single best day since October 2008 (which tells you something). We're on watch for whether a tsunami follows the earthquake. Here's what helps: a regret pyramid—exhaust low-regret actions before high-regret ones. Don't be surprised if stocks swing up or down 10-15% over the next month. That's context so you don't overreact to every 3-5% day. Life must go on, even now. The main event is now U.S. versus China. Let's hope we can stick the landing.
Markets
+2
Mar 29, 2025
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11 min read
Hey Boss, Have We Tried Boiling the Frog Instead?
Tariffs make sense for small countries with weak armies—they internalize the defense cost of importing valuable stuff that makes you a target. But the US? We have the strongest military on Earth. We created global free trade by providing cheap military protection to the world. Globalization created winners and losers here, and instead of taxing the winners to help the losers, we decided tariffs were the answer. Economic policy uncertainty is now at 2008-crisis levels. But high yield spreads are 3%, not 20%. So far, this is a tremor, not an earthquake. The real question: how did the last few weeks feel to you?
Risk
+2
Feb 8, 2025
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7 min read
It’s All (No) Fun and Games
What does the science of making decisions under uncertainty teach us about this moment? There are two types of uncertainty: natural (comets fall from the sky) and human-made (we create new chapters of history books). Right now we're playing a huge game of "will we or won't we?" around tariffs. Here's what matters: greater uncertainty causes you to settle for less—functionally similar to higher interest rates cooling the economy. When uncertainty goes from plus-or-minus $250 to plus-or-minus $750, people settle for $660 instead of $970. That's why amping up uncertainty is an obvious negotiating tactic. Watch for this behavior in yourself and don't let it override how you approach life.
Markets
+2
Feb 1, 2025
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4 min read
The Best of "Wealth, Empowered" Before It Had a Name
I moved my newsletter to Beehiiv and gave it a formal identity: WEALTH, EMPOWERED. My mission is to empower you when it comes to your wealth and understanding of markets. Before the platform change, I wrote every article on my website. Here are 2024's highlights: a framework for making decisions when the future is unknown (Seeing Around Corners), the three fundamentals of money management built over 20 years (An iOS), escaping the wealth management industrial complex (Is This What You Thought It Would Be), bare-minimum investment homework for beginners, being a liquidity provider when markets dry up (Be Like Water), and why governance might be the eighth wonder of the world.
