According to Statista, Thanksgiving is America’s favorite holiday, narrowly ahead of Christmas and Memorial Day. Americans annually brave the busiest airports and highways of the year to gather together with friends and family, enjoy a feast, and take a moment to appreciate all they have to be grateful for. They may not realize it, but that spirit of Thanksgiving is good for their financial security. In this blog we’ll examine nine ways that gratefulness can make you a better investor.

Every once in a while, a new company bursts on the scene and captures the imaginations—and the money—of millions of investors. Typically, that company is in a new category, like electric vehicles or online conferencing. These stocks often experience a rapid and very steep rise in price as investors pile in, and almost always then see a significant drop as the euphoria dissipates. This pattern triggers two very different but problematic behaviors in retail investors: FOMO when they buy and the Disposition Effect when they sell.

Every once in a while, a new company bursts on the scene and captures the imaginations—and the money—of millions of investors. Typically, that company is in a new category, like electric vehicles or online conferencing. These stocks often experience a rapid and very steep rise in price as investors pile in, and almost always then see a significant drop as the euphoria dissipates. This pattern triggers two very different but problematic behaviors in retail investors: FOMO when they buy and the Disposition Effect when they sell.

The Fed made news on September 17, announcing a half percent drop in the fed funds rate. Headline after headline proclaimed “the first rate cut in four years,” but we should remember that rates were at or very near zero until March of 2022, when it appeared that the pandemic-driven inflation had gotten out of hand. Between that March and July of 2023, the Fed raised rates 11 times. This latest rate cut signals that the Fed now perceives a recession to be a bigger threat than rising prices. Investors may wonder what the impact of fed rate changes may have on their portfolio, so with this blog, we seek to provide some historical perspective.

In the second quarter of this year, Berkshire Hathaway liquidated almost exactly half of its holdings in Apple, Inc., amounting to about 389 million shares. This action followed the sale of about 116 million shares, another 13%, in the first quarter. Apple’s share price began the year at about $185 and ended the second quarter at about $217, so Berkshire was selling into an up market, providing over half a billion shares of liquidity into a stock that traded about 63 million shares per day thus far this year. Warren Buffett has famously said that he’s fearful when others are greedy, but there may have been other reasons behind the decision to reduce exposure to Apple.

According to Wikipedia, the first recorded instance of “OK boomer” was in a Reddit comment on September 29th, 2009, almost 15 years ago. Younger Americans, like all the generations before them, need to form their own identities, and often, that means an outright rejection of the values and cultural norms of their parents and grandparents. This phenomenon is an example of a dialectical process in which the status quo produces its own contradictions. This natural tension can lead to a higher level of truth as the contradictions resolve themselves into progress.