“A genius is the man who can do the average thing when everyone else around him is losing his mind.”—Napoleon

Investing sounds easy in theory.

(1) design a portfolio based on goals and risk tolerance

(2) set guidelines for when and how changes should be made

(3) then get out of its way  

As anyone who has been investing for some time will tell you, it is anything but easy.

Let’s pretend we have two retirees, Jim and Marty McFly. They both look the same financially. They are retiring in the year 2000 with $1,000,000, all invested in the S&P 500, and plan to begin withdrawing $40,000/year. The only difference is that Marty McFly has the ability to travel to 2020 and go do retirement in reverse…

It sounds great in theory.

Step 1 - Find the next Amazon while it’s still a small and unknown company.

Step 2 - Hold it forever.

Step 3 - Make a bazillion dollars and retire on my own private island.

Let's go ahead and say I did the impossible and got Step 1 right. I say impossible because even Jeff Bezos wasn't sure it would become what it did.

Last month Elon Musk tweeted two words – “Use Signal.” He was referring to an encrypted messaging app you can get on your phone. Signal is a private company meaning most of us can’t buy the stock. However, there is a company called “Signal Advance,” a completely unrelated biotech company that happens to share the same “Signal” name as the messaging app Elon mentioned.

Many investors, including myself, admire Warren Buffet for his calm demeanor, timeless wisdom, and incredible investment success. However, the secret ingredient to his enormous net worth, which is north of $80 billion, is not his ability to time the market or pick winners – it’s simply time IN the market. Warren Buffet started investing as a young boy at the age of 11…

I hate the term “learning experience” when it comes to investing mistakes. The cost is too high. This term was thrown around a lot this past summer and fall as the market rebounded from the March lows and started to make all-time highs again.