Good reads from around the Web.
One of the many reasons I love the Mr Money Mustache blog is the MacGyver-like way the Mustachioed one has welded an ecological message onto his financial freedom message.
(Well, that and and the swearing. We’re too tame to do it around here!)
Not surprisingly, I loved his latest post [1] where he observes the weird spending habits of an alien race as seen from outer space, and then sees just the same thing back home on Earth:
In one incident, I traveled to a distant suburb with my son to attend a child’s birthday party […]
At the party, every food was an unrecognizable assembly of chemical compounds ripped out of a brightly-colored box, served on styrofoam plates which were promptly discarded into a black plastic bag.
Every gift was a plastic and metal recreation of a famous movie character or vehicle, ripped out of another plastic package. There was a television in the kitchen blaring news and advertisements.
The unhealthy parents drank beer and ate cake, and sighed about not having enough time or money to spend more time taking care of their home, or their kids, or themselves.
All of this took place in a neighborhood with beautiful walking paths and parks, and a modern utopia of a school just down the road. But every weekday at 2:45 PM, an ominous horror begins. An immense and powerful passenger vehicle will ease down the road and come to a halt at the prime spot of the school’s pickup loop.
And the engine will be left running.
As ever, Mr Money Mustache has a plan to deal with it – and to his credit he isn’t advocating the use of tactical nuclear warheads – so go read it [1].
Live long and prosper!
From the blogs
Making good use of the things that we find…
Passive investing
- The Vanguard UK equity income tracker – DIY Investor (UK) [2]
- How robo-advisers threaten the index fund business – Kitces [3]
- What exactly is an index tracking or passive fund? – Maven CP [4]
Active investing
- Rooting for a bear market? – A Wealth of Common Sense [5]
- Sagentia: The company nobody wants to sell – iii blog [6]
- A dozen lessons from David Tepper about investing – 25iq [7]
- Is the Fundsmith Equity Fund overvalued? – Beddard [8] and Kingham [9]
- The 10 most profitable dividend paying shares – UK Value Investor [10]
Other articles
- How much would sir like to pay for that? – The Escape Artist [11]
- Google CFO Patrick Pichette on quitting the rat race – Google+ [12] [Via Ermine [13]]
- The great £1,000 declutter results are in – Under the Money Tree [14]
- 18 months to go to early retirement – Retirement Investing Today [15]
- The cash conundrum – Simple Living in Suffolk [16]
- More on the great cash debate – Abnormal Returns [17], PragCap [18], and CompoundingMyInterests [19]
Product of the week: Some new hydro-electicity backed bonds are offering 7% a year says The Guardian [20], but I’d note investors in similar solar mini bonds might have lost the lot [21] recently. This new offer from LoCO2 [22] is in conjunction with well-respected Triodos Bank, which is somewhat reassuring.
Mainstream media money
Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view these enable you to click through to read the piece without being a paid subscriber of that site.1 [23]
Passive investing
- Blackrock/iShares cuts its FTSE 100 ETF fees – Investment Week [24]
- Meb Faber: Fees and taxes trump asset allocation – ETF.com [25]
- Who is the next John C. Bogle? [Long, deep] – Bloomberg [26]
- Bill Bernstein: Stick to your plan – ETF.com [27]
- Swedroe: The incredible shrinking alpha [book [28]
extract] – WM.Com [29]
- More Swedroe: Active managers are running out of excuses – ETF.com [30]
Active investing
- The mystery of hedge fund investing – NY Times [31]
- Gold’s long decline is the real story – Bloomberg [32]
- 10 shares you can buy-and-hold forever – Telegraph [33]
- Investing in momentum shares – ThisIsMoney [34]
Other stuff worth reading
- Are you a mortgage misfit? – The Guardian [35]
- A place in the sun and a tax-free pension [Search result] – FT [36]
- Early retirement and the paradox of success – N.Y. Times [37]
- Housel: What’s your investing perspective? – Motley Fool US [38]
- Meet the world’s most interesting billionaire: Fred Olsen – Fortune [39]
- Enduring lessons from The East India Company – The Guardian [40]
Book of the week: The Investor’s Podcast interviewed [41] Tobias Carlisle this week in a very ebullient fashion. Carlisle wrote the innovative book Deep Value [42]
Like these links? Subscribe [43] to get them every week!
- Note some FT articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”. [↩ [47]]