by Stoffel | Jun 11, 2026 | Biases, Investing
Most people believe they know their risk tolerance. They completed a questionnaire, answered questions about hypothetical market drops, chose a profile – conservative, moderate, aggressive – and moved on. The problem is that questionnaires measure what you think you...
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 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 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...
by Stoffel | Apr 15, 2026 | Investing
On April 9, 2026, Howard Marks published “What’s Going on in Private Credit?” – a full-length memo on the state of the market. Marks is co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, one of the world’s largest alternative investment managers,...
by Stoffel | Apr 2, 2026 | ETF, Investing, Portfolio Management, Risk Premia
Updated July 2026 So, you have gone through the checklist. You understand your goals. You know your time horizon. You have accepted that markets will go up…and down. You are ready. Now comes the harder part. Not intellectually, but behaviourally: What do you actually...
