Gracie University is the online division of the Gracie Academy.  The Gracie Academy based in Torrance, California is the U.S. home of the Gracie style of Brazilian Ju-Jitsu.  Gracie University is run by the two eldest grandsons of Helio Gracie, the founder of the Gracie style.  The Gracie name is very well known in martial… Read more

Last month JP Morgan released the report of a task force set up to explore the huge trading losses suffered last year in its CIO group.  The facts, in brief, appear to be as follows: CIO stands for Chief Investment Officer, and the original purpose of the CIO group was to manage JPM’s liquid asset… Read more

In early 2007, before the financial crisis hit, author Naseem Taleb published his best-selling book “The Black Swan” in which he argued that extreme events occur more frequently than most of us are trained to expect.  We are trained to think in terms of the “normal” distribution, or bell-shaped curve, in which events more than… Read more

Morningstar has published a research report that purports to show that a properly constructed financial plan can generate a meaningful increase in lifetime retirement spending.  The value added from a plan is referred to as “gamma” following in the line of Greek letters being used to assess investment returns.  The first Greek letter “alpha” is… Read more

Actor, economist, humorist Ben Stein has written an innovative book1 on financial planning.  Instead of telling you what you should do to improve your financial position, Ben tells you 49 things you can do to impair your financial position – to reduce wealth, reduce income, and increase the chance of destitution.  Many of these things… Read more

T. Boone Pickens is famous as an oilman, corporate raider and energy investor.  He is also a graduate of Oklahoma State University (OSU) and an avid supporter of the University and its athletic programs.  Reportedly, he has donated nearly $500 million to support various OSU initiatives.  About five years ago he had the bright idea… Read more

 How to become a Billionaire By Bill Ackman Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has produced an interesting lecture on finance and investing.  It can be found at www.floatinguniversity.com.  It is one of twelve lectures on “big ideas” currently residing on the site.  Ackman’s lecture, titled “All you need to know about finance and investing in… Read more

I began my career as an economics professor (actually, assistant professor) at the Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University).  In 1980, I joined with three colleagues at the Claremont Men’s College (now Claremont McKenna College) who had started an economics advisory company called Claremont Economics Institute (CEI).  CEI provided financial forecasting and consulting to… Read more

In his book “Unintended Consequences” Edward Conard1 not only supports the benefits of income and wealth inequality (as described in a previous post (August 7, 2012)), both as an indicator of past successful ventures and as an inducement to future ventures, but he also provides a diagnosis and remedy for financial crises. He denigrates the… Read more

A financial planning rule of thumb that you often hear is that the percentage allocation to safe assets (cash or bonds) should increase with age, and accordingly the percentage allocation to the risky asset (equities) should decline with age.  One popular version is that your allocation to equities should be no higher than 100 minus… Read more