A short rundown of my most-read posts from the past year:
1) The Ridiculous Nature of Asset-Based Fees. This post from May caught attention from across the web, linked by Abnormal Returns, The Motley Fool and reblogged by several other sites. It was cross-posted at ColoradoBiz magazine and caught a lot of Twitter traffic from Morgan Housel, Ron Lieber and others. The post is still generating more organic search traffic than anything else on my site. So apparently I touched a nerve there. Maybe investors are sick of paying 1%.
2) Murder Holes: Built to Fail. One of the earliest posts on the blog, this was a response to Josh Brown’s book Backstage Wall Street that Josh shared on his site and Tadas at Abormal Returns both picked up and reblogged. The piece is about some of the worst high-cost, commission-laden, illiquid investment “products” I’ve seen in my time in the biz.
3) Why I Won’t Stop Talking About Passive Investing. Again this was another response to something that Josh Brown wrote. In short, I keep writing/tweeting/talking about passive investment philosophies because I keep finding myself in front of investors who have little idea how poorly their actively-managed portfolios are performing and how much they are paying in fees and taxes every year. This piece was shared by Josh (among others) and reblogged at Business Insider.
4) What’s my beef with Mr. Ramsey, anyway?. This has been discussed at length and eventually turned into a long-form article in Money Magazine from Felix Salmon, but there was an online conversation across Twitter and several blogs about the quality of and conflicts involved with the investment advice given by personal-finance “guru” Dave Ramsey. Ultimately this didn’t turn into anything as Ramsey never defended the 12% return and 8% withdrawal assumptions (or the use of high-commission, poor-performing broker-sold mutual funds) but instead used his bully pulpit to pick on a Motely Fool writer.
Finally, one of my favorites (even if a little self-serving):
How and Why I Quit My Job Before 30. This was a reflective piece about the process and risks involved with walking away from my stable long-term job with a wealth management firm to start Bason. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat, and am grateful for clients who made my first full calendar year such a success.
Bason Asset Management 