Suze Orman is one of those singular personalities in the financial business who seems to be right on the pulse of everyone she meets. She’s written books, starred in her own television show and made innumerable appearances in person. Like Oprah and Bono, she’s nearly a one-name-only celebrity. Say “Suze” and you know who I… Continue reading →

“Disruption” is a term you hear bandied about in Silicon Valley, usually associated with young CEOs in t-shirts. The idea isn’t new. The 19th-century industrialist Andrew Carnegie would recognize it as competition. Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist from the 1930s, would call it “creative destruction.” In finance world terms, my favorite version of disruption is… Continue reading →

Gasoline right at the highway exit is usually cheapest. Drive a few miles toward town and you might see a 10 cent per gallon jump. Ever wonder why? If you said “competition,” go to the head of the class. Gas stations tend to cluster around knots of highway traffic. The driver near empty on a country… Continue reading →

Jack Bogle, the founder of the massively ayuccessful (and just plain massive) Vanguard Group, recently said his former company is perhaps getting too big for its own good. And big it is. The house that Jack built took in $276.2 billion so far this year, more than its eight largest competitors combined. Much of that… Continue reading →

North Carolina Outward Bound School (NCOBS) is not just a group I give charity to— it is an integral part of my life. As an avid outdoorsman, I find the core values of Outward Bound especially appealing. But it is their tremendous work with young people that motivated me to support NCOBS in a more hands-on role.… Continue reading →

Nearly 10 years ago, iconic billionaire investor Warren Buffett took what seemed like a contrarian bet for a professional stock picker. He bet any comer that a simple, low-cost investment in the S&P 500 would beat a hedge fund strategy over 10 years. On the line was $1 million, to be paid to a charity… Continue reading →

Walk down the aisles of your local grocery store. If you’ve been shopping for a few decades, you know a few things almost without thinking. Fresh foods are along the walls, dry goods in the center aisles. Store brands are usually just fine and cheaper. Now look at the shelves. Some products (say, fancy ground… Continue reading →

A friend of mine was complaining recently about the price of apples, specifically a variety marketed as a “Honeycrisp” apple. He would go to the grocery store to buy a bag of apples and find Honeycrisps at $7.99 a three-pound bag. Right next to them would be Gala apples at $3.99. “Why are Honeycrisp apples… Continue reading →

Back in the 1980s, stock picking gurus such as Peter Lynch at Fidelity offered small investors a strikingly simple mantra: “Invest in what you know.” The idea was intuitive and highly attractive for a number of reasons. Essentially, if you noticed a small coffee chain with a line out the door, you bought that stock.… Continue reading →