I WAS HAVING DINNER in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a new friend, Joseph. He told me of his frustration with his financial advisor. The two might meet for an hour, but afterward Joseph still didn’t know what to do.
“Explain it to me like I’m five,” he said to me. So I did.
Joseph has a PhD from an Ivy League university, so he doesn’t need a kindergarten story. Yet I understand his frustration.

I HAVE FOND MEMORIES of walking the Atlantic City boardwalk with my father, enjoying the ocean breeze and discussing life’s secrets. As I grew older, he used these walks to impart financial wisdom; nothing clears the head like the sound of rolling waves breaking over the sand. My father endeavored to fill my brain with notions about setting long-term goals and how best to achieve them.
“Let your money work for you,” he’d advise.

EXPERTS HAVE LATELY been recommending that investors shift some money from short-term bonds—which offer the highest yield these days—to longer-term issues, whose prices are more sensitive to interest rates.

Had I followed this advice—and I almost did—I’d have quickly lost money in what’s supposed to be the safe part of my portfolio. Bonds did indeed rally from their October 2022 lows, but have pulled back since early May. Vanguard Intermediate-Term Treasury ETF (symbol: VGIT) was down 4.2% from its May 4 peak through last Friday,

SOMEONE ASKED ME this week if he should own pork bellies in his portfolio. While he was kidding, this does get at a real question: Should you own commodities like cattle futures, gold, oil, lumber, soybeans and more?
Those who favor investing in commodities typically cite two benefits. First, commodities are seen as a bulwark against inflation. This is obviously a timely concern. Second, because commodities don’t move in lockstep with stocks or bonds,

THERE ARE CERTAIN things I did right during my financial journey, notably saving like crazy, tilting heavily toward stocks and favoring index funds. But if only all my doing had stopped there.
Looking back over almost four decades of investing, what I see is far too much tinkering. At various times, I’ve owned funds devoted to precious metals, global real estate, commodities, emerging market bonds and more. I know this tinkering devoured precious time—and I strongly suspect it hurt my investment results.

WE GET EXCITED WHEN our investments go up in price and disappointed when they fall. This is the logical “holder’s view” of a change in our immediate wealth. Some may feel the urge to buy more of the winners and sell any losers.
But there’s also an alternative way to view changing market prices: the “investor’s view.”
Consider that an investment’s price rise often indicates you’re taking a pay cut. Yes, you now have more money invested in that position,

IF YOU’RE LIKE ME, you’re always tempted to do something with your portfolio.

How should I invest if inflation stays high? What if interest rates come down? Am I well-positioned for that? Do bonds offer a better risk-reward than stocks right now and, if so, should I adjust my long-held stock-bond mix?

There’s been recent research and commentary, including two pieces from HumbleDollar’s Adam Grossman that you can find here and here,

EVEN AFTER BEAR markets in 2020 and 2022, investors’ appetite for stocks remains as robust as ever. But what if stocks had not just a rough year or two, but a dismal stretch that lasted more than a decade? Below is an excerpt from the second edition of my book The Four Pillars of Investing, which was published earlier this month.
In August 1979, BusinessWeek ran a cover story with the headline “The Death of Equities,” and few had trouble believing it.

MY FATHER, WHO DIED in 2007, collected coins in a haphazard fashion through the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. I believe he did this in the hope they’d appreciate significantly in value. In other words, he did it as an investment, not as a coin collector pursuing a hobby.
I’ve now been assigned the family task of “seeing what we can get” for Dad’s coins. As an investor in the stock market, I’m curious: Did my father’s efforts pay off—or would he have been better off putting the money into stocks?

INVESTORS ARE OFTEN told that it’s impossible to consistently time the market. To do so successfully requires you to make two correct decisions: when to get out of stocks—and when to get back in.
In 2022, J.P. Morgan published a study showing that a lump sum invested in the S&P 500 over the 20 years through 2020 would have earned an annualized return of 5.2% if you’d missed the 10 best days, versus 9.4% if you’d stayed invested throughout the period.

DURING MY 30s, I worked for a defense contractor. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the Soviet Union imploded just over two years later. Many at work believed that the end of the Cold War would lead Congress to reduce defense spending. Sure enough, layoffs at my company commenced soon after.
I was fortunate to avoid being laid off. I do recall, though, overhearing one coworker in his 50s who, after receiving a pink slip,

AFTER ENRON’S COLLAPSE in 2001, there were numerous articles about employees who had most of their money in the company’s stock and how they’d lost it all. Taking that message to heart, I’ve endeavored to keep our holdings of my company’s stock below 10% of our net worth. I must confess, however, that in good times it’s crept up to 15%—and in bad times it’s fallen to zero.
I can’t claim any particular insights or novel thoughts on how to manage company stock.

IF YOU WANT ADVICE on investing, don’t ask me. My investment knowledge is, shall we say, limited.

I don’t pay much attention to expense ratios, individual stocks, international markets, the VIX, interest rates or much else. I know nothing about evaluating stocks or the overall market, though I have learned the hard way that rising interest rates aren’t friendly to utility stocks.

In other words, I’m more like your typical saver who’s playing at investing.

WE LIVE IN A WORLD rife with intolerance—and that intolerance, alas, has infected the once-civilized world of index-fund investors.
Back in the 1990s, we indexers were such a small minority that simply owning index funds was a common bond. But now that more than half the fund market is given over to index funds, internecine skirmishes regularly erupt, with folks debating what’s the right way to index and belittling those who take a different approach.

I’VE MADE A LOT OF investing mistakes in my time. In fact, if I ever wrote a book on investing, the title would probably be Don’t Go There, It Sucks.
I’m a Kentucky hillbilly and, yes, that’s hillbilly talk. Another local colloquialism is, “Careful, or you’ll end up like Scrambo Hill.” I don’t know who Scrambo was. But apparently, he resided around our parts at one time, and you don’t want to end up at the bottom of the barrow like him.