by Stoffel | Jun 4, 2026 | Investing, Risk Premia
Paying a professional more to manage your money makes you statistically poorer. That is not a criticism of intelligence or effort. It is arithmetic; and the numbers, accumulated across decades and millions of investor accounts, are strikingly consistent. Most people...
by Stoffel | May 28, 2026 | Financial Literacy
Debt has a reputation problem. Mention it at a dinner table and you will hear one of two reactions: moral revulsion or dismissive shrugging. Both miss the point. Debt is a financial instrument and no more inherently virtuous or evil than a kitchen knife. The outcome...
by Stoffel | May 21, 2026 | Speculation
In June 2020, a 20-year-old student named Alex Kearns logged into his Robinhood account and saw a balance of negative $730,165. He had been trading options – complex instruments he did not fully understand – and the figure on the screen, which turned out to be a...
by Stoffel | May 14, 2026 | Financial Literacy
When did you last feel genuinely motivated by the number in your savings account? If the answer is “rarely,” you are not failing at personal finance but you are experiencing a structural problem with how most of us are taught to save. We are told to put...
by Stoffel | May 7, 2026 | Biases, Decision Making, Investing
In 1875, an Ohio farmer named Samuel Benner published a chart that claimed to predict the future of financial markets. It was based on the price cycles of cast-iron. One hundred and fifty years later, that same chart – the Benner Chart – still circulates on social...
