Adam M. Grossman

IF THE NAME HARRY Browne doesn’t ring any bells, I’m not entirely surprised. Though he was twice a presidential candidate, he never captured more than 1% of the vote. Still, to my knowledge, Browne is the only financial advisor ever to run for the White House. 
As a Libertarian, some of Browne’s economic proposals were extreme—including, for instance, abolishing income taxes. But one of his ideas has stood the test of time: In his 1981 book, 

IT’S LATE NOVEMBER. Is there anything you can still do to trim your 2019 tax bill? There might be. One overlooked aspect of mutual funds is how they can significantly—though quietly—impact shareholders’ tax returns.
By way of background, mutual funds—including exchange-traded funds (ETFs)—are required to pay out to shareholders, on a pro-rata basis, all of the income that they generate each year. This includes interest paid by bonds, dividends paid by stocks and capital gains created when a fund sells an investment at a profit.

THIS MONTH SAW THE publication of a remarkable biography: The Man Who Solved the Market chronicles the life and career of hedge fund manager James Simons. Over the past 31 years, Simons’s Medallion Fund has clocked average returns of 66% per year. Even after Medallion’s fees—which are the highest in the industry—investors took home average returns of 39% a year.
By way of comparison, the U.S.

WHEN STEWART MOTT died in 2008, his obituary in The New York Times described him as offbeat. That’s probably a fair description. Mott’s father, Charles Mott, had been one of the founding shareholders of General Motors. As a result, the younger Mott didn’t need to work and instead pursued other passions.
Among his many activities, Mott enjoyed political activism, but he wasn’t a strict partisan. To underscore this, he once brought both a live elephant and two donkeys to a fundraiser.

IN WINTER 2012, I experienced what every traveler dreads: a lost bag. Stranded without so much as a toothbrush, I had to replace everything—and fast. At first, this seemed like a pain. But in the end, I came to see it as a blessing. Why? Replacing everything—from head to toe, including the toothbrush—became an unexpected opportunity for a fresh start.
To be sure, all I’m talking about here are clothes and toiletries. Still, the experience made me realize that,

A UNIQUE EVENT occurred earlier this month: A group who call themselves the Bogleheads held an investment conference in the Philadelphia area, near the headquarters of Vanguard Group. Since its inception in 2000, this annual gathering has brought together fans of Vanguard’s founder Jack Bogle, who died earlier this year. 
Bogle was beloved by his fans for his authenticity and iconoclastic views. He was so self-assured, in fact, that—after he retired from Vanguard—he didn’t hesitate to share his opinions,

CLAY COCKRELL HAS an unusual job. He describes himself as a psychotherapist treating the “1% of the 1%” in New York City. From this vantage point, Cockrell has gained unique insights into the lives of the extremely wealthy. What conclusions does he draw about money and happiness? “If you have an enemy,” Cockrell says, “go buy them a lottery ticket because, on the off-chance that they win, their life is going to be really messed up.”
This observation fits well with the aphorism that “money doesn’t buy happiness.” There’s a growing body of research supporting this view.

I FEEL LIKE A BROKEN record when I talk about the benefits of index funds. Indeed, index fund advocates—myself included—sometimes get a little preachy, so I won’t bore you with the same facts I’ve cited before.
Instead, I want to focus on a more subtle reason to index, which has been highlighted by the stock market’s behavior over the past year. You’ve probably heard the expression “a rising tide lifts all boats.” When it comes to the stock market,

IN THE INVESTMENT world, there’s a lot of nonsense and a lot of hot air. But a few people are like the Shakespeare of personal finance: There’s wisdom in virtually every word. Warren Buffett is probably the dean of this group. But another leading light is Peter Lynch, who in the 1970s and ’80s stewarded Fidelity Investments’ Magellan Fund with enormous success.
Lynch is largely retired today, but his plainspoken advice is as valuable as ever.

IN RECENT WEEKS, the world met WeWork founder Adam Neumann. The meeting did not go well. WeWork had been preparing an initial public offering for its stock and things seemed on track. But the IPO was shelved and Neumann was out of a job. 
The proximate cause: A Wall Street Journal profile of Neumann detailed the entrepreneur’s odd habits and fanciful notions. Among Neumann’s stated goals: to become president of the world,

PRESIDENT TRUMP recently criticized the Federal Reserve—yet again. Calling Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues “boneheads,” the president expressed frustration that they haven’t done more to lower interest rates. Specifically, the president said we should, “get our interest rates down to ZERO, or less.” That last part—“or less”—was key. Not only should rates be lower, he argued, but they should be below zero, as they have been in Europe.
Last week, the Fed did indeed cut short-term interest rates—by 0.25 percentage point.

A DOZEN YEARS AGO, on my first day of business school, the professor stood at the board and illustrated a concept called “present value.” Truth be told, over my remaining time in school, I don’t think I learned anything more important than I learned in that first hour. It is, in my view, the single most useful tool in all of personal finance. Below, I’ll walk you through the concept and then illustrate some ways it can help you make better financial decisions.

INVESTMENT MANAGER Michael Burry made waves last week when he issued an apocalyptic forecast: Index funds, he said, are in a bubble similar to the housing bubble that ended very badly in 2008. Burry couldn’t say when the crash would come, but noted ominously that, “the longer it goes on, the worse the crash will be.”
Burry acknowledged that he’s “100% focused on stock picking,” so—at first glance—his criticism seems not unlike other active fund managers’ criticisms of index funds,

NIKOLA TESLA WAS a brilliant inventor, with nearly 300 patents to his name. He also had some unique habits. Among them: Every night, before he sat down for dinner, he would ask his waiter for a stack of 18 napkins. He would then use them to carefully wipe down his silverware. Even at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, where Tesla lived for decades and where the silverware was presumably clean, Tesla insisted on this time-consuming process before every meal.

ON DEC. 17, 2002, Harry Markopolos walked out of his Boston office wearing an oversized trench coat and a pair of white cotton gloves. His destination: the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. 
A quiet figure, Markopolos worked as the chief investment officer at a small firm that specialized in trading stock options. He had heard about a New York-based competitor that was apparently doing similar work, but with much greater success. Following his boss’s recommendation,