IMAGINE A MARKET genie offered you the choice between knowing the stock market’s return next year or the stock market’s average return over the next 10 to 15 years. Which would you choose?
I’m guessing that most people would prefer to know how the stock market will do next year. After all, that seems like more actionable information, plus who has the patience to wait a decade or longer? But for those with an investing time horizon of more than 10 years—the vast majority of us—knowing the stock market’s return over the next decade or longer is far more valuable information.

SERIES I SAVINGS bonds are getting a lot of attention right now because their stated yield is 3.54%, an apparently fabulous interest rate on an almost no-risk investment.
But don’t be fooled: While I bonds are a fine choice for super-conservative investors, you’ll get that 3.54% annualized yield for just six months and thereafter the yield could be far lower.
I bonds feature a variable interest rate that floats with inflation. That floating rate resets each May and November based on recent inflation.

A TEL AVIV WOMAN named Anat decided to surprise her elderly mother with a gift. Noticing that her mother had been sleeping on the same worn-out mattress for decades, Anat replaced it while her mother was away from the house. She then took the old mattress out to the curb.
It wasn’t until the next morning that her mother noticed the change and asked what had happened to the old mattress. Anat explained that she had put it out with the trash,

IF WE WANTED TO design a portfolio that appeals to our worst investment instincts, we might couple a savings account with lottery tickets. Some governments have even issued bonds with just these characteristics.
What’s the attraction? The savings account ensures that part of our portfolio never loses value, while the lottery tickets let us dream of riches in return for a relatively small investment.
This year, we’ve seen the lottery-ticket mentality writ large, as investors take fliers on meme stocks,

A CLOSE FRIEND’S LONG career in the motion picture business recently came to an end when the studio eliminated her job. Even before the pandemic, the industry was changing, so she wasn’t surprised or, for that matter, especially sad about getting laid off. She was lucky to receive a good severance package and is now ready to do something different. But finding the right job will likely take time, so carefully managing her cash through the transition period is crucial.

GROWING UP, I remember my mother telling me to save because “you never know what can happen.”
Like a pandemic?
I reference my mother because she was ahead of her time in preparedness and quite savvy about money. She bought gold when it wasn’t popular—and I think she would have bought bitcoin. Why? For the same reasons that my husband and I decided to take the plunge.
To be sure, bitcoin itself has plunged in recent weeks,

TERRY ODEAN HAS been studying investor behavior for decades. The University of California at Berkeley finance professor has proven again and again that everyday investors often harm their performance by trading too much.
Last year, Odean and his fellow researchers turned their attention to the Robinhood phenomenon. Result? When I spoke to Odean, he said the only thing that surprised him was the magnitude of the self-inflicted investment wounds by users of the free-and-easy trading app.

SOMETIMES OUR BEST investments can be a great guide to what not to do—even better than our worst investments. Consider three of my best:
1. Master limited partnerships. In 1999, I read an article by Paul Sturm in the much-missed SmartMoney magazine. It was a comprehensive review of a security I hadn’t previously heard about, namely master limited partnerships (MLPs).
The two decades since have made the unique commonplace.

AN MIT PROFESSOR named Edward Lorenz published a paper in 1972 titled Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas?

It was a catchy title. Though Lorenz didn’t mean it literally, the basic idea was that events in the physical world are highly interconnected—more so than they might appear.

The world of investments is similarly interconnected in ways that aren’t always visible. Just like the weather,

THE ECONOMY IS recovering and the stock market has recovered. The pandemic isn’t over, but it seems we’re past the worst, at least in the U.S. Feeling better? Take a deep breath, take a step back—and think about the past two decades.
Since early 2000, we’ve had three major stock market declines, or roughly one every decade:

In 2000-02, the S&P 500 tumbled 49%, excluding dividends. The first leg down was triggered by the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

IN RECENT MONTHS, there’s been a lot of handwringing about the stock market. Thankfully, we seem to be on the back end of the pandemic, but things remain far from perfect in the economy. Millions are still unemployed. And the government has had to spend trillions to get us through, adding to a federal debt that was already enormous.

Today, the economy is far more fragile than it was pre-COVID. And yet the stock market just keeps cruising to new all-time highs.

IS THIS A TIME TO be fearful? In Berkshire Hathaway’s 1986 annual report, Warren Buffett wrote, “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”
Make no mistake: There’s plenty of greed on display right now, whether it’s bitcoin, nonfungible tokens, Robinhood traders, GameStop or special purpose acquisition companies. All of this has some observers talking of a market bubble. Indeed, I suspect much of this nonsense “will end in tears,” a phrase my mother often used when trying to control her four rambunctious children.

ROUGHLY HALF OF Americans don’t invest in the stock market. Why not?
According to a JPMorgan Chase survey, 42% say they don’t have enough money, with 63% believing you need at least $1,000 to start investing. But in fact, some financial firms have no required minimum, including the mutual funds offered by Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab.
No doubt a lack of financial literacy also plays a role. The S&P Ratings Services Global Financial Literacy Survey asked folks around the world about notions like diversification,

IN THE INVESTMENT world, inflation is the topic of the day. There are four key reasons:

Congress. Since March 2020, the federal government has dropped more than a trillion dollars of cash into the economy via stimulus checks and the Paycheck Protection Program. While many of the recipients were unemployed and needed these dollars to meet basic needs, others were not. The result: More money in people’s pockets allowed them to spend more,

WHILE READING THE great books on investing, studying financial theory and reviewing our investment performance are essential to becoming a better investor, sometimes it can be useful to learn from the mistakes of others—because what not to do can be even more important than what to do. As Otto von Bismarck may have said, “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
Which brings me to me.