Despite making money in Leucadia National Corp. (LUK) it is my dumb trade of the month. My trade has had me feeling bad for a while and this stock seems to want to make it personal and kick me while I’m down, if I may anthropomorphise.

The Greenspan Put: Put as much blame on Greenspan as possible!
While everyone is now signing on to the lynch Greenspan posse, here is someone who appears to have been six years ahead of the mob.
Losch Management called out Greenspan in a 2002 Client letter: “history will not view Mr. Greenspan’s role quite as enthusiastically as the business press does today.”

A month ago I was not checking the VIX daily. The Volatility Index hit a new high of 59.06 during Wednesdays sixth straight fall for US markets.
For the Dow and the S&P 500, Wednesday capped their biggest six-day point loss ever. It was a session of wild swings, with no clear direction determined until the final minutes…
In the last hour of trading, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned that the turmoil “will not end quickly.”
In possibly unrelated news. Last night I decided to re-read The Book of Investing Wisdom, …

Most Friday’s I drop my daughter at dance class, head to one of Melbourne’s best cafés and have a latte while I wait for Borders to open at 10. I then have around 20 minutes to choose and scan an investment book. While I am normally a slow reader I can skim a book in 20 minutes and pick out a few lessons which resonate with me.
Today my book of choose was Way of the Turtle, by one of the original turtles, Curtis Faith.
Almost every page I scanned contained a …

Belief Systems
Why do so many intelligent people not transfer their success to investing success? Think about that for a minute. Got an answer?
Now consider this question. Why has investing research such as the following found that psychologists are more successful investors than some of the smartest people around?
Recently, a research, which was conducted by Bank of England, the universities of Heidelberg and Bonn together with McKinsey, observed the share-buying behavior of about 6,500 persons in an Internet experiment. They found that psychologists, particularly, were good at guessing other players behavior …

One of my favourite investing topics is behavioural finance. It is the area which I believe has the largest effect on the returns of most investors. I consider getting to know yourself a very valuable endeavour and should be a priority for all investors. Many investing newsletter writers and analysts have already mastered stock picking and will sell you their ideas for a relatively inexpensive price. The place most investor can add real value to their portfolio is in understanding themselves and conquering their biases. …