When I was first living in New York, I made a terrible mistake. I found a necklace that I wanted to get for my girlfriend, but it was too expensive. "I should save money," I thought. "This is the kind of spending that gets people in trouble." (It was a $1400 necklace and we had only been dating for a few months). Here's where the mista...

If it isn't already, .04/12 should be your favorite number in the world. Why? This fraction (~0.00333) tells you the amount of money your assets will generate each month in retirement for you. Say you have $50,000 saved up for retirement right now. Can you spend $50,000 every year in retirement? Of course not, you’ll have one year of f...

Question: What do I do with my money? Answer: The answer will differ for everyone, but if you don’t already have your financial house in order (steady job > emergency savings > no high interest debt), then you have some work ahead of you. Start by reading my post called How to Save. Then, check out the personal finance subreddit (r/per...

Hey, world. I've moved to Hey World. March marks the first year anniversary of my blog (#1ya'll), and while writing about COVID and markets and hearing your feedback has been awesome, I haven't enjoyed moderating spam comments (there's seriously like 100+ every time I log in), trying to figure out why my website that I pay for keeps sp...

Hi, my name’s Chris and I think about markets. (Hi, Chris.) Mostly the stock market but also prediction markets, video game markets, crypto, bonds, foreign exchange, whatever. Since I finished grad school in 2014, I’ve only worked for one firm – Moody’s – first in New York and now in Boston. During my six year career, I’ve always paid ...

A few notes from last time before diving in … there’s many ways to talk about “the stock market”. The three most common indices are NASDAQ (comprised of technology stocks), the Dow Jones Industrial Average (“the Dow” – composed of 30 large stocks meant to represent various industries) and the S&P 500 (a group of 500 US companies that S...

I like the format of referencing my old posts at the beginning of my new ones not only because it holds me accountable to addressing what I’ve written before, but also because it helps me see where I might be making errors in my thought process. So I’ll start new posts off referring to what I’ve written previously, but if you ever want...

Dear patient readers: I’ve been meaning to post for weeks, but work and a sick wife have kept me quite busy. On the work front, Moody’s is antifragile — when shit hits the fan and most companies start laying off employees, we actually get busier as we adjust credit ratings more often, pump out more research for the market, and have to ...

It’s been 103 days since my last post. To quote all of Yen’s lines in Ocean’s 11… It’s a fair question. Since my last post at the end of May, I started #vanlife and my laptop decided to stop charging – not ideal conditions for blogging. Luckily, I’m back on the grid now with laptop rejuvinated, and I intend to update the website with m...

If you’re interested in this book, you can buy it here A few notes before we get in: I’ve always loved how Bill Gates reviews books on his personal site. One of the richest guys in the world, Bill still does book reports like he’s been given homework assignments from a teacher he wants to impress. I greatly admire people like Bill who ...

Last week, I received texts and calls from so many of you asking what the hell was happening with Gamestop (whose stock ticker is GME) that I thought it would make sense to write an end of week, after market hours blog post explaining what happened. But what started as a fun wait-till-they-hear-about-this finance story quickly captured...