About Andy

Welcome to Bad Investment Advice. We are going to be sharing with you, our observations from decades of personal investing experience and all the many ways to lose money.

My personal investing story

I am not a financial professional. I’ve had a few decades of my own personal investing experience and frankly, I consider myself lucky that I’ve had the benefit of a series of salaried jobs over those years and I’ve not had to use the proceeds from my own investments to feed, clothe and house myself and my family – we’d have been in the poor house long ago.

Strangely, despite my poor investing track record, my math skills are likely better than average – I took two optional math classes in my final undergraduate year in engineering (I didn’t need to take any!). I am not afraid of numbers or analysis and I am curious about the history of money, finance, investing, banking, and trying to learn lessons from the past.

But then again, one of the lessons of the history of what works and what doesn’t in investing is that there is nothing strange or incompatible about the above two paragraphs.

What is new today, why it matters and why it doesn’t matter

Throughout the recorded history of financial scams, bubbles, euphoria, panics, and crashes we hear the same arguments, cries, headlines, and now blogs, posts, and tweets. You will always find pundits telling you how things are different now and why, because they are different we don’t need to worry about underlying value, or solvency, or liquidity, or markets becoming unhinged.

But history shows that while we may need to master at least the basics of the modern tools and markets there are two factors, firmly rooted in human psychology that have not changed:

• Financial “creativity” and the endless feverish search of the finance industry for greater and faster profits will produce new products, tools, and derivatives, and

• The herd instinct will drive markets up beyond “reasonable” levels and then drive them crashing down again with devastating effect.

Avoiding traps, scams, myths, and misconceptions

We will be looking at our own mistakes, what makes those mistakes “classic” and how they derive from common misconceptions. Our goal is to help you spot and avoid making similar mistakes yourself.

All the best,

Andy

Bad Investment Advice

Disclaimer: As I said I am not a financial professional. All the information on this website is for information purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice, good or bad.

Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you click on a link and buy something, I may receive a commission. You will pay no more so please go ahead and feel free to make a purchase. Thank you!