These articles go deeper into investing strategy, market history, and the principles behind Wealth Accumulation and Wealth Harvest. New posts are added regularly — subscribe below to get them in your inbox.
Dividends Have a Role — Just Not the Whole Argument
There’s a lot of lost-decade and 40%-drawdown talk being used lately as “proof” that dividend investing is the superior strategy. I’m not anti-dividend, but I disagree with this because I think the argument skips a step. It treats dividend investing as though it’s universally better, when really the question is about which stage of your…
Keep readingHow to Harvest: A Tour of Retirement Withdrawal Strategies
Most financial conversations are about accumulation. Save more, invest smarter, compound longer. Almost nobody talks about the other half of the equation: how do you actually turn a pile of assets into a paycheck once you stop earning one? That’s the Wealth Harvest phase, and the strategy you pick matters as much as the portfolio…
Keep readingShare the Fruits of Capitalism
I want to make a case for something that used to be considered common sense: capitalism is the greatest economic system ever devised by human beings. Not perfect — nothing is — but the most effective wealth-creating, poverty-reducing, standard-of-living-improving engine in the history of civilization. And more importantly, I want to make the case that…
Keep readingRobinhood: Six Months of the Good and the Bad
I’ve been a Fidelity customer since 2012, housing every investment account I owned there. In 2022, I even started putting every purchase on the Fidelity Visa Signature Rewards Card. Fully immersed in the Fidelity ecosystem, I never looked elsewhere. Then Robinhood started showing up everywhere. So in April 2025, I opened an account, just to…
Keep readingMy All-American Portfolio
I’ve previously laid out the case for and against holding international exposure. Both sides have real merit. But I didn’t tell you what I actually do with my own money. Here it is: I hold zero international stocks. My retirement accounts and my taxable brokerage are all VTI, all the time. No VXUS, no VEA,…
Keep readingThe Race to Zero: How the Cost of Investing Went from Robbery to Free
For most of the twentieth century, investing in the stock market wasn’t just risky — it was expensive. Not in the “markets go up and down” kind of way. Expensive in the “you’re paying a toll just to play” kind of way. Commissions, sales loads, management fees — the financial industry had built a remarkably…
Keep readingDividend Irrelevance, Revisited
The Modigliani-Miller Dividend Irrelevance Theorem is one of those ideas that every finance student encounters and most never fully reconcile with how markets actually behave. The theorem holds that, under a set of idealized assumptions, a company’s dividend policy has no effect on its value or on shareholder wealth. Whether a company pays out its…
Keep readingThe Psychology of a Losing Position
Every investor eventually holds a losing position. Whether it’s a stock that has dropped 10% or 40%, the experience is remarkably consistent: it feels different from a paper loss on an index fund you’ve held for a decade. Individual positions come with a story—a reason you bought, a price you paid, an expectation you formed.…
Keep readingRoughly Efficient Markets
The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) is a foundational concept in finance and is widely taught in academia. At its core, EMH holds that security prices rapidly incorporate all publicly available information, making it extremely difficult for investors to consistently achieve above-average returns. I believe this framework is largely correct but often taken too far. EMH…
Keep readingInternational Stocks
International stocks are widely considered a part of a well-diversified portfolio. An international stock index fund can be found in just about any target date retirement fund. There are strong arguments for both the inclusion and exclusion of international stocks in an American investor’s portfolio. I will explore both. Exclusion From 1970-2025, the compound annual…
Keep readingTotal Stock Market vs. S&P 500
Investors seeking broad exposure to the U.S. stock market typically choose between two options: the S&P 500 index or a total market index. Over the long run, the difference between them is unimportant. Yet many investors still find themselves overanalyzing the choice. This article breaks down the key differences, saves you some research time, and…
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