The Ponzi scheme run by Bernard Madoff may have cost his investors some $50 billion. For many, the big question is how could seemingly sophisticated investors be so stupid? Even more important, what lessons can we learn from their mistakes so that we can avoid the next con artist who comes along? Interviews with victims show that class status, exclusivity, […]
Investors suffering during major bear markets are tempted to “time” the market: to sell and avoid the downturn, and then reinvest before the inevitable recovery. It now seems obvious to these investors that anyone with half a brain should have foreseen last year’s credit crisis and massive worldwide fall in asset prices. By selling out ahead they would have preserved […]
Were you able to predict the global bear market that sucked trillions of dollars out of investors’ pockets in late 2008? In retrospect, it looks like it should have been easy to predict—after all, the subprime mortgage crisis had gone on for a year before stocks started crashing in October 2008. It seems obvious that the economy was collapsing and that […]
