Photo credit: Wikipedia Creative Commons By Jason Zweig Dec. 8, 2014 With the final three weeks of the year upon us, investors should be alert for signs of window-dressing – the practice through which professional money managers pump up the value of their holdings by buying a few shares at ridiculously high prices at year-end....
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By Jason Zweig | 3:18 pm ET Nov. 30, 2014Photo Credit: “The first oil well,” retouched version of 1859 photograph, Library of Congress Long before it referred to consumers storming through shopping malls, “Black Friday” stood for a dire day in the financial markets. On Friday, Sept. 24, 1869, an attempt by mogul Jay Gould and his cronies to...
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Image credit: Anna Hurst By Jason Zweig Dec. 3, 2014 Almost exactly a decade ago, I met perhaps the toughest and most disciplined investor I’ve ever encountered: a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army named Jack Hurst. When I interviewed him, in late 2004 and early 2005, Jack had already had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou...
Read MoreBy Jason Zweig | 12:15 pm ET Nov. 28, 2014Image Credit: Christophe Vorlet It’s been another turkey of a year for stock pickers. Among all mutual funds that invest in big U.S. stocks like those in the S&P 500, only 9.3% are beating the index through Sept. 30, according to Denys Glushkov, a senior researcher at Wharton Research Data Services at the...
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Image credit: Front page of the New York Daily Investment News, Oct. 25, 1929, Museum of American Finance, moaf.org By Jason Zweig 10:17 am ET Nov. 26, 2014 On the 20th anniversary of the Crash of 1929, the Saturday Evening Post asked Fred Schwed Jr., author of the book Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?, to write about what he had learned...
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