Due to the nature of my current job in the financial industry, I will be unable to make any more contributions to The Morning Dollar or any of its social media channels due to legal regulations. I’ve had a ton of fun the past couple of months helping educate all of you in the investing and financial world! That said, TMD may one day be back. But for now, it’s with a heavy heart that I must say goodbye for a while. Stay smart, my friends ..read more

That’s a bold claim, the Internet 2.0. But that’s the vision that Vitalik Buterin had in mind when he was formulating the vision behind Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency in the world. It has a market cap of $279.5 billion and is currently trading around $2400 at the time of this writing (June 8th, 2021). Vitalik was born in Russia, but moved to Canada when he was 6 years old. He was always interested in computers and math as a child, and according to hodlin.com, “while in grade three, Buterin’s talents were discovered, then he was transferred to a gifted class and started to show a f ..read more

Happy Saturday folks. This morning I read a great letter from Mauldin Economics, my favorite economics and investing newsletter, about how new technology and innovation will shape our economy (and our investment strategies) in the years to come. I’ve referenced Mauldin before, as well as someone he brings up in his article, Cathie Wood. Cathie is the CIO of Ark Investments, and she actively manages several different ETFs that center around innovative and disruptive technologies. Cathie caught the attention of many this past year when her Ark Innovation ETF posted massive gains in the summer an ..read more

To fully understand the major cryptocurrencies, I figured it would be best to start with Bitcoin since it’s the oldest crypto and the most popular. That said, let’s dive into how Bitcoin works and what it may look like in the future. There are several major aspects of cryptocurrencies that make it an attractive investment and a legitimate alternative to fiat currencies, which include privacy, security and decentralization. We’ll go over these in a bit more detail, but we need to go over some more insight into how crypto networks run. I read through the original paper that Satoshi Nakamoto pub ..read more

If you’re an investor that pays any attention to current trends, you’ve likely noticed that investing in cryptocurrency has been a hot topic as of late. Personally, I think it’s a super interesting technology and a different way to approach the monetary system and exchange of currencies between people and countries. That said, it’s can be a confusing form of tech if you haven’t looked into it before. I remember back in high school in 2014, I heard my Spanish teacher talking about him and his brother trying to “mine” Bitcoin. I can distinctly remember thinking incredulously “what in the world i ..read more

Yesterday, as I drank my morning cup of coffee and read through the Wall Street Journal, I came across an article written by James Mackintosh titled “If Inflation is Coming, Here is What to Do About It.” I thought it was a really valuable read in these times, with the market being as volatile as it is. Since not everyone has access to the journal, I’m going to summarize Mackintosh’s key points in this article, and hopefully you can glean something from his advice. First of all, let’s understand why inflation is a problem for investors, and where it comes from. Since Covid-19 ravaged our econom ..read more

In the “Time Value of Money” article, we looked at the massive benefits that can be reaped from starting your investing career early. Now, not all of us have the ability to put all of your money into a self-selecting portfolio, pick stocks and other securities ourselves, and still get a healthy return on your investment. In fact, the vast majority of people will earn a return that is less than the return on the S&P 500 benchmark, and many people will even recognize negative returns. A recurring theme in finance is that it’s very tough to beat the market. Sometimes people get lucky, someti ..read more

I think one of the most productive habits that I’ve developed during my lifetime is a fond love of reading books. Ever since I was a boy, reading has always been a part of my life. My parents drilled it into me when I was very young, and since we didn’t have a TV for a chunk of my childhood, reading was a regular activity for the family. I lost the habit a bit in high school, as teenagers tend to do, but I actually picked it up again in my sophomore year of college, and it’s stuck with me since! In this post, I’d like to give some book recommendations to you, books that I’ve read over the past ..read more

Diversification is an important aspect of any well-built portfolio. Those who invest without diversification subject themselves to avoidable risks and potential losses on their investments that were unnecessary. That said, let’s dive into the details of diversification and why you should understand and apply this simple concept. Simply put, a diverse portfolio is not subject to as much “systematic” risk. Systematic risk is basically risk that affects all stocks. For example, a big natural disaster or major change in governmental policy is a systematic risk that affects all stocks. If people be ..read more

In this video, Dr. Thakor and I talk about what the future of retail investing might look like. For the ordinary investor in this day and age, the ease of access to information and the markets is unparalleled in history. What might investing look like down the road? View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Morning Dollar (@themorningdollar ..read more