“The sky has finally fallen,” said Eeyore. “Always knew it would.” While you might not want to adopt the pessimism of Winnie-the-Pooh’s gloomy friend in every aspect of your life, when it comes to picking stocks, having a glass-is-half-empty attitude can give you a statistical advantage. It’s not because the market as a whole has been contracting. In fact, quite the opposite has been true over the past several decades. It’s because, for any given timespan, the number of stocks that underperform the market will outnumber [...]

Chris Sperry, a consultant who works with young baseball prospects, tells about a lesson on discipline he’ll never forget. He was attending the American Baseball Coaches Association convention, where for two-and-a-half days more than 4,000 coaches (from Little League to Major League) attended seminars on every aspect of the game. After a day of learning about pitching mechanics, hitting philosophy, and team practice drills, Sperry felt it had been well worth his time to attend. But the session everyone had been buzzing about was an afternoon [...]

As the 2021 pro football season kicks off, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will start at quarterback a man who by all standard measures is middle-aged. But if 44-year-old Tom Brady plays like he did last season, his team should do very well.   Even if you don’t follow sports this is an extraordinary story. Brady’s win in last year’s NFL Championship Game came 19 years after his first Super Bowl win in 2002. The most amazing thing is how little he has seemed to have changed—especially [...]

Image from Unsplash.com This coming Labor Day will be characterized by backyard barbecues, back-to-school sales, and many employees enjoying the federal holiday. But few people will stop to consider what this day represents in the transformation of what it means to be an average worker in America. And the tragic history that led to the basic workplace rules we tend to take for granted. Up to the Industrial Revolution (which peaked in the mid-1800s) most Americans worked on farms. It was hard and dangerous [...]

In his classic detective story The Purloined Letter, Edgar Allen Poe tells how an embarrassing letter has been stolen (purloined) from the French Queen to be used for blackmail. The authorities believe they know who took it, and order a thorough search of his apartment. The police detectives pull up the carpet, probe seat cushions with needles, and even look behind the wallpaper. But they fail to find the letter. In comes Poe’s protagonist, amateur detective August Dupin, who quickly finds the letter and turns it in to [...]

Tony Dungy, who is remarkable for winning a Super Bowl as a player and then doing it again as a head coach, has a simple philosophy for dealing with tough situations. "You can't always control circumstances," says Dungy. "However, you can always control your attitude, approach, and response." This way of thinking is what allowed him to stay calm and think clearly in times when it was tempting to respond emotionally. And it's also a mental discipline practiced by a group of ancient Greek philosophers known [...]