Reading Time: 4 minutes Friends, What's the biggest investing mistake you've ever made? You're probably thinking of an investment that lost most of its value. But that's probably not your biggest mistake. Here's what the three of us consider to be our biggest investing blunders: In 2009, Brian Stoffel sold Google for (a split-adjusted) $10 per share. He's missed out on 820% returns -- a mistake costing tens of thousands of dollars. In 2007, Brian Feroldi sold Dexcom for (a split-adjusted) $2 per share. He's missed... …

Reading Time: 3 minutes Friends, Last week, we published a YouTube video on 10 lessons we learned in 2022. A few highlights: You can't ignore the Fed Inflation is back Cash isn't trash Crypto remains the Wild West Narrative follows price People seemed to like it. There was, however, a glaring exception: they wanted to know why we didn't include "valuation matters" in our list. That's a fair question. The three of us have have different opinions about valuation: Feroldi and Withers consider valuation; Stoffel ignores... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Friends, In the 1920s, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto noticed something in his garden: 80% of his peas came from just 20% of his plants. Before long, he saw the same in his job: 80% of the land was owned by just 20% of the people. The “Pareto Principle”, or the “80/20 Prinicple”, was born. It's since become a powerful tool that helps to separate “signal” from “noise”. By zeroing in on the small - but impactful - inputs, you can gain incredible leverage. The Pareto Principle also …

Reading Time: 3 minutes Friends, Friends, In the children’s book, Ivy and Bean: What’s the Big Deal?, the namesake characters – 2nd graders – are tasked with a big assignment: help reverse global warming. Their solution was simple. On a warm fall night, they took adults to an open field. They stretched out on grass. The stars were bright. Crickets were chirping. Ivy and Bean said nothing…for 15 minutes. Then, they ask a simple question: “How do you feel now?” The responses: Wonderful. Relaxed. Connected with nature.... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Friends, What the heck happened last week? In a two day window, the NASDAQ rose 9%. Advertising-focused companies -- like Magnite -- jumped as much as 100%. And all of this because inflation came in at 7.7% -- instead of the expected 7.9%? While it's nice that inflation appears to be cooling, a 7.7% jump is still nothing to get that excited about, right? To answer this question, it's important to remember that the stock market is a forward-looking machine. It doesn't care about where we are.... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Friends, In 2007, a California radio station held a contest: Hold your Wee for a Wii. Contestants competed to drink the most water without going to the bathroom. A 28-year old, Jennifer Strange, finished six liters in three hours before bowing out. Later that night, she died from hyponatremia – or the swelling of cells due to low sodium in the bloodstream. If you walked up to a stranger and asked, “Is water a good thing?”, you’d overwhelmingly hear, “Yes.” Yet, as Strange’s story shows,... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Friends, There once was a queen who wanted to learn all the wisdom in the world. She filled her library with every book she could find. She soon realized that she would never have time to read them all. She tasked the kingdom's scholars to condense all worldly wisdom into one book. A decade later, the scholars returned with an enormous book. By then, however, the queen's eyesight had deteriorated. She asked them to condense it to a chapter. A decade later, they returned. But by then, …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Friends, Thousands of years ago, Aristotle said there was only one point in living: to attain eudaemonia. That's a fancy word for "happiness" or "contentment." Since then, however, there's been no shortage of experts telling us what will get us to that state. Believe it or not, science now has a fairly definitive answer. It comes from a 75+ year experiment started at Harvard during the Great Depression. In the experiment, researchers followed cohorts of both Stanford grads as well as... …

Reading Time: 3 minutes Friends, On September 15, 2011, Netflix reported earnings. Its stock then plunged 20%. The drop was due to Netflix announcing that it lost subscribers after it attempted to split out its DVD business into a subsidiary dubbed Qwikster. Millions of investors sold their shares in response to the awful news. Brian Stoffel was one of those investors, selling $5,000 worth of the stock. That proved to be a short-sighted decision. Netflix stock is currently a 10-bagger since. Brian Stoffel's rash... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Friends, Imagine an owner walking her dog in a straight line through Central Park. Your task is to predict where her hyper-active dog (not the owner) will be at any given time. Seems simple enough. But there’s a catch: the leash is 100 feet long. Now, your job seems much harder. The owner's movements might predictable, but the dog's location is not. You quickly realize that any precise short-term prediction about where the dog will be is often wrong. If, however, you zero in on the fact …