Weekend Reading – Crushing markets, interviews, mentions, financial tools and #money stuff

re: Investing behaviour gaps — “The Summary: Bad investing behaviour is like any other bad habit – you need to kick the cycle.”
True, unfortunately habits are incredibly difficult, on a conscious and deliberate level, to both break and form. This is yet another reason why saving and investing beginning at a young age is so important. Easier to do with an un-trenched mind than trying to dig yourself out of a 20-year hole.

re: Crush the efficient market hypothesis — Cullen’s background is somewhat interesting. He made big bucks working for the big banks believing all the usual financial literature. The ’08 Crisis scared the heck out of him and he set off to discover — and question — how the system actually operates, in an effort to never again fall into the fear/greed trap. I think he’s done a pretty good job at overturning a lot of mossy rocks. That’s why when authors state such things as, “consistent with the modern literature”, I cringe. ‘Modern literature’ doesn’t mean it’s correct literature.

re: Karl — split decision on this one. I stopped reading MDJ quite a while ago but I think a lot of Karl’s commentators are concerned with his very heavy concentration in real estate. It’s true, but I’ve also read enough across the board to know that diversification is for wealth preservation, and concentration is for wealth construction (e.g. all your investable assets are concentrated in public equities). Hope he can hold it together.

re: 15 Canadian Personal Finance Bloggers to Follow — 15? Pareto will cut that down to 3 and give you more time to do other more important things.

re: CEO of everything — long-time fan of Gail Vaz-Oxlade and her “usual very direct style”. People who are in crisis can’t afford to waste resources with gradual movements. In times of emotional crisis involving money, people require emotional support first and foremost over sensible advice (when you are distressed, not even sensible advice comes across as sensible). Apart from that, “…three weeks is a new pattern setting up to take hold…” is a great example of authors being “consistent with the modern literature” yet that modern literature, and the following author, being very wrong.

re: Automate financial life — as stated above, instil positive habits early as possible. Making habit formation easy makes forming habits easy. Automate as much cash out of your hands as possible, once it’s where it’s supposed to be (e.g. RRSP), you’ll most likely continue to be lazy and leave it there. Automation leaves you with more brain power to spend on more important decisions, like what flavour latte to buy.