During the height of the real estate bubble, I wrote a column saying that the crash was coming and suggested selling any piece of real estate that was overpriced, questionable, or non-performing. As expected, I received angry replies.
One of my more popular recent Yahoo! Finance columns, "Playing the Mutual Fund Lottery," wasn't written entirely by me -- my friend, CPA, and trusted tax advisor, Tom Wheelwright, was the primary author.
Sometimes life just isn't fair. When I was growing up in the 1960s, my parents said to me, "Listen to your elders. You need to learn to respect their wisdom. Someday when you're older, young people will listen to you." So I listened to my parents and grew up respecting the wisdom of those older than I was. But that notion has been turned upside down: Nowadays, people my age need to listen to and respect the wisdom of people who are younger than we are.
People often ask me, "How do you find great investments?" My standard reply is, "You have to train your brain to see them. Great investments are all around you."
A few weeks ago I was talking with Tom Wheelwright, a CPA and business owner, about why people play the lottery. His comparison of the lottery to investing in mutual funds is worth sharing.