Pop Economics — Page 3

Six investing books that never left my bookshelf

November 27, 2010

I’m not one to do round-ups… …but over the last couple months, I’ve gotten a dozen or so e-mails asking about investing and behavioral economics and where to read more about it. One of the problems with learning about this stuff is that unless you’re still an undergrad, it might seem like you missed your [...]

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Where’s the inflation?: We remember the negative better than the positive

November 23, 2010

Both anecdotes and statistics lie. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal and Sarah Palin had a rare face-off over a pretty trivial remark. In a blog post, a reporter wrote about a speech Palin gave against the Fed’s new quantitative easing efforts, and toward the end, pointed out that one bit of rhetoric she [...]

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The reasons I don’t buy gold (Video!)

November 19, 2010

This could probably apply to a lot of markets. I’ve written too many times about all the reasons I’m not a fan of gold as an investment, even if it’s only a part of a diversified portfolio. I know, I know— “It’s a currency of last resort.” Or maybe, “It’s always been a store of [...]

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Focus: We lack it, and it’s costing us

November 16, 2010

Our minds spend 46.9% of the time wandering. That’s according to a new study by Harvard psychologists Dan Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth. The two developed an iPhone app that asked 2,250 volunteers at random intervals what they were doing, how happy they were, and whether they were thinking about the task at hand or something [...]

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Investing advice: Just enough information to be dangerous

November 12, 2010

You’re never going to learn to invest in individual stocks from reading this blog. Says the beginning of a Wall Street Journal story today: “Forget ‘buy and hold.’ It’s time to time the market.” Awesome. That’s the kind of provocative, yet easy to knock down, straw man that blog writers salivate over. I could pull [...]

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How good are you at estimating risk?

November 9, 2010

Plane crashes are not that common. And yet… You’ve probably heard the old yarn about how we often overestimate the chances of dying in a plane crash. When I made a guess before beginning this post, I was actually off by a factor of ten. I, somewhat flippantly, guessed one in a million, when really [...]

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The Dow is back to pre-Lehman levels. Does that mean everything’s ok?

November 5, 2010

Let’s make a quick comparison. This is a short post, and I’m sorry about that. For reasons apart from my work here, this has been a week from hell. Remember how the world felt before Lehman Bros. collapsed? Bear Stearns had gone down, but some economists still thought it might just be a short downturn. [...]

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The shopping crawl: How spreading things out can maximize pleasure

November 2, 2010

Thank God for commercials? Sometimes, I read a study and go, “Hahaha yeah right.” Most often, I then proceed to do exactly what the study says I would do. This is one of those studies. I mean, how would you react, if the title was, literally, “Enhancing the Television‐Viewing Experience through Commercial Interruptions”? A couple [...]

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Is America just not a good investment anymore?

October 29, 2010

Hello Get Rich Slowly visitors! I’m flattered J.D. sent you here, and I’d be even more thrilled if you stopped by on your own! Here are a few reasons why you should: 1. This ain’t your typical personal finance blog. I don’t often tackle the basics of a Roth IRA or how to choose [...]

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How come investors are still afraid of stocks?

October 26, 2010

Yeah, but what have you done for me lately? A few years ago, professors from the University of Nevada at Reno and the Wharton School observed gamblers at the roulette wheel. In case you’re not familiar with roulette, in short, gamblers place money on even or odd, black or red, or a number—one through 36, [...]

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