Tag Archive for: Denver Gazette

wake of a ship at sea

Human Nature Is a Failed Investor—But Your Plan Doesn’t Have to Be

When I entered this business in the late 1970s, I quickly realized that markets weren’t the real challenge — people were. Not because they lacked intelligence or information, but because the human mind is wired for survival, not investing.
black friday sale sign

Anchoring: The Mindset Mistake That Quietly Steers Investors Off Course

I meet monthly with thoughtful, experienced investors who genuinely seek the best decisions. Despite any savviness, however, they often fall prey to a similar mental trap: anchoring. It’s not one of ignorance but of human nature. Anchoring…
apple orchard

The Underestimated Orchard

The one force in finance that remains stubbornly misunderstood is compounding. Human brains have evolved to understand straight lines, not curves. We grasp addition and subtraction, but our intuition breaks down around exponential growth. We…
target date funds

The Trouble with Target-Date Funds

Target-date funds have quietly become the default investment choice for millions of Americans. In workplace retirement plans, they’re the path of least resistance — simple, convenient and automatic. Select the year you plan to retire, direct…
Capitol Building
,

Current Events Only Raise Uncertainty

Every investor I’ve met has, at some point, asked a version of this question: “Given what’s going on right now, what should I do?” As a financial advisor, I always consider this a reasonable thought. The world is unpredictable: Wars…
VUCA by SketchplanationsSketchplanations
,

The Antidote to Ambiguity

Toward the end of the Cold War, a new kind of landscape emerged — defined by turbulence, ambiguity and interconnection. In that moment, folks at the U.S. Army War College coined the term VUCA, an acronym for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.
two signs displaying "one way"
,

The Certainty of Uncertainty

Remember that as investors, we are constantly on the precipice of uncertainty. We can never confidently know how anything will play out. No one can. So what should we do? With everything changing, we think we should be adapting. New circumstances require portfolio changes, right?
roller coaster

A Quarter Century of Panic and Prosperity

As we enter fall 2025, the S&P 500 is in the green for the year. It’s as if April’s panic never happened. This isn’t a fever dream, but a reminder: Stick to your plan.