China’s economic story over the past few decades is nothing short of incredible. What was once a closed-off, largely agricultural nation transformed itself after the economic reforms led by Deng Xiaoping. It quickly earned the nickname "the world's factory," throwing its doors open to global markets and attracting a flood of capital from both large institutions and everyday retail investors. This was a massive shift in the world of .
It’s not easy to revisit our biggest mistakes, especially when they involve a lot of money. But back in 2007, I made a blunder in the stock market that cost me nearly two-thirds of my capital, and the lesson is too important not to share.
Even Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, admitted back in 1934 that he had little faith in the ability of most people—even professional analysts—to consistently pick winning stocks. His solution was a simpler, more standardized approach: just try to match the market's performance. This very idea laid the groundwork for what we now know as Exchange-Traded Funds, or ETFs.
When it comes to , one of the most common pieces of advice you'll hear is to stay away from stocks with high Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratios. But I’m going to tell you the first rule I follow when trading growth stocks: ignore the high P/E. If you let that single metric guide you, you’ll miss out on some of the biggest winners in the market.
I’ve always seen the stock market as one of the most powerful tools for building wealth ever invented. It’s a space that I firmly believe should be open to everyone, not just a select few. That’s why is a question more people should be asking. There’s a place for every kind of personality and strategy here.
When you’re just getting started with investing, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. But what if I told you that one decision accounts for nearly all of your results? For anyone , this is the place to focus. A landmark study found that a staggering 94% of the difference in portfolio returns comes down to a single choice: your asset allocation. This is the strategic mix of stocks and bonds you decide to hold. It's more important than picking the “perfect” stock or timing the market. Getting this right is the foundation for anyone treating to build long-term .
When you're first getting started with , there's a tempting and seemingly logical strategy for picking mutual funds: just choose the ones that have been doing the best lately. It makes sense, right? We’re drawn to winners. This is why a huge amount of investor cash—over 150 percent of net flow in 2016—pours into funds with a four or five-star rating from Morningstar.
There's a fundamental truth at the heart of that many people miss, but it's the key to long-term success. Warren Buffett put it best when he explained that what owners can earn, in total, is limited to what their businesses earn in total. Think about it: over time, the combined gains of a company's shareholders can't magically exceed the actual business gains of the company itself.
My day job is all about taking risks. As a venture capitalist at my firm, Social Leverage, my partners and I invest in seed-stage software companies, with my personal focus being on financial technology. You might recognize some of our early investments, like Robinhood, eToro, and Ycharts. This background, along with co-founding StockTwits, probably makes it clear why I favor individual stocks over index funds when it comes to .