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,

IT’S WIDELY ASSUMED that the Federal Reserve, our nation’s central bank, has two mandates: maximum employment and stable prices. But a closer look at the Federal Reserve Act of 1977 on the Federal Reserve’s very own website reveals a third mandate, namely “moderate long-term interest rates.”
Does a 1.7% yield on 10-year Treasurys and 2.15% on 30-year Treasurys count as “moderate long-term interest rates”? Since I have nothing better to do on the weekend,

MICHAEL BURRY WAITED years to be rewarded for his bet against subprime mortgages. Actor Christian Bale, in the movie version of Michael Lewis’s book, The Big Short, portrays Burry curled up in the fetal position on the floor of his office. When the financial crisis finally hit in 2008, he made $100 million.
I’m no Michael Burry and the chance I’ll ever see $100 million is about 100 million to one.

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.

PAST PERFORMANCE is no guarantee of future results. But we keep hoping.
Over the 10 years through August 2009, the large-cap stocks in the S&P 500 shed an average 0.8% a year, even with dividends included. Meanwhile, U.S. value stocks beat U.S growth stocks, smaller-cap U.S. shares notched 5.5% a year, developed foreign stock markets 2.7% and emerging markets 10.4%.
Fast forward one decade, and the leaders have become laggards and vice versa. Over the 10 years through August 2019,

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.

A LOT OF INVESTORS have spent a lot of time, hope and energy trying to emulate guru portfolios. I’m no different.
When I read Unconventional Success by Yale University’s chief investment officer, David Swensen, I felt like The Truth was being revealed. Here was the wisdom of the country’s top endowment manager with, at the time of publication, a benchmark-crushing 20-year record of 16.1% a year. This wasn’t an attention-seeking fund manager or TV host,

A RECENT ARTICLE by HumbleDollar’s fearless editor got me thinking about the potential risk of having most or all of my investments with a single brokerage firm or fund company. What happens if the company collapses? I was surprised at how little I knew about these matters after investing for nearly 30 years.
The Securities Investor Protection Act of 1970 was passed by Congress in response to some turbulence in the markets that caused a number of brokerage firms to fail.

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,

“JOURNALISM IS printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” It’s a quote that should be framed on the wall of every newsroom.
Of course, every journalist knows this. We call PR—public relations—the dark side. But most of us journalists stray into it far more often than we like to admit.
As a reporter, I cut my teeth at a group of regional newspapers in a prosperous part of England in 1989.

IN DECEMBER 1954, 23-year-old John Neff hitchhiked from Ohio to New York in search of work. A Navy veteran, Neff had recently graduated college near the top of his class, with a degree in finance. His hope: to land a job as a stockbroker. But despite these qualifications, Neff was turned down. Why? According to a biographer, the brokerage firm felt “his voice didn’t carry enough authority.”
It didn’t take long for Neff to recover from this setback.

DECIDING WHETHER to buy bonds or pay down the mortgage used to be a tricky decision. Not anymore: Paying extra on your home loan will almost always be the right choice.
This takes some explaining—because it involves wrapping your head around the standard vs. itemized deduction, investment taxes, and a mortgage’s shifting mix of principal and interest.
First, let’s dispense with the obvious objection: Yes, if you’re inclined to buy stocks rather than pay down the mortgage,

INDEX DESIGNERS FTSE Russell and MSCI are jumping on China’s A train this year—and index-fund investors should watch out. There’s a $6 trillion wild-and-woolly domestic Chinese stock market slowly chugging your way, whether you like it or not. Yes, it may bring riches—and it’ll definitely bring huge risks.
In fact, your emerging markets index fund may already have 34% in Chinese stocks, and it could exceed 50% in years to come. Sound unnerving? For those with a position in an emerging markets index fund—or are considering one—good alternatives are hard to come by.