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A Wealth of Common Sense
Personal blog · awealthofcommonsense.comeconomicsbusiness
A Wealth of Common Sense is a personal blog at awealthofcommonsense.com about economics and business. Since 2014, 139 different Hacker News readers have linked it 345 times, most often “What If You Only Invested at Market Peaks?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 2 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ben Carlson's posts on long-term investing, market timing, housing prices, inflation and index-fund concentration, often as data for their own points.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- Called one post a very nice article, and another said it is worth taking a look at the market-timer post.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Personal Finance, Investments & Markets
Most-linked posts?
- What If You Only Invested at Market Peaks?20 people · 41 mentions · first linked 2019-01-02
- What if you only invested at markets peaks? (2014)13 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2016-03-09
- What If You Only Invested at Market Peaks?6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2014-11-08
- /2021/03/what-if-housing-prices-arent-as-high-as-they-appear/3 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2021-04-09
- Inflation Truthers3 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2021-01-05
- /2023/12/rich-author-poor-readers/3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-01-05
- The U.S. Housing Market vs. the Canadian Housing Market3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-09-09
- Retail Venture Capitalists2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-03-06
- /wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Screenshot-2021-01-04-211959.jpg2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-01-05
- Was the 1966-1982 Stock Market Really That Bad? (2014)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-08-11
What Hacker News says?
One of the finance blogs that I read published this stat yesterday: "Here are the total returns from the past four presidential election dates: Election day 2008 +675% (14% annualized) Election day 2012 +400% (14% annualized) Election day 2016 +207% (15% annualized) Election day 2020 +81% (16% annualized)" -- https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/11/some-things-i-dont-... As he says in that article, "You can believe…
Comment linking /2024/11/some-things-i-dont-believe-about-investing/
on “Trump wins presidency for second time”Submitted The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks as a story · 354 points
HN discussion> Between '99 and '09 you would actually lose money You would have made a profit (albeit a small one) if you invested every year from 99 to 09, using the yearly figures on wikipedia. > From the peak of the '99 bubble till around today we have about 2% yearly return on the S&P 500 (excluding dividends) Using March 99 as the peak, it's 2.5% ignoring dividends and ~4.5% if you include them. Source: https://dqydj.com/sp…
Comment linking /2014/02/worlds-worst-market-timer/
on “Investing for Geeks”Submitted A critique of the claim that passive investing is a bubble as a story · 308 points
HN discussionhttp://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market-...
Comment linking /2014/02/worlds-worst-market-timer/
on “Investing for Geeks”Submitted Stock Market Returns Are Anything but Average as a story · 222 points
HN discussion> Yes, I've heard that a million times, but that kind of advice presupposes a bull market. What if it's 1967, and you're about to go into a 15 year period of up and down markets, with no real growth in stock prices? And that's before inflation; the market fell substantially during the horrible 70s if measured in real dollars. All kinds of stock enthusiasts (like most folks here) got eaten alive. Pessimism reigned by…
Comment linking /2014/02/worlds-worst-market-timer/
on “Investing for Geeks”Submitted Three Levels of Wealth as a story · 203 points
HN discussionWhat If You Only Invested at Market Peaks http://awealthofcommonsense.com/worlds-worst-market-timer
Comment linking /worlds-worst-market-timer
on “Ask HN: What to do after $8M (all cash, post tax) exit?”Submitted Living Like Nothing Matters as a story · 155 points
HN discussioniPad price remark gets Fed's Dudley an earful - https://www.reuters.com/article/economy/ipad-price-remark-ge... - March 11th, 2011 “I can't eat an iPad.” > Best not to cite the price of the new iPad as an example of why inflation isn't a problem when you head into a working-class neighborhood. In Queens, New York, on Friday, New York Fed President William Dudley did just that. He got an earful. After being bombarded…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Screenshot-2020-11-13-100839.jpg
on “90% of US working hours are spent on tasks not covered well by AI benchmarks”Submitted Sam Bankman-Fried vs. the Match King as a story · 139 points
HN discussion>For median family single home in 1980, $55k. In 2020, $300k. (source: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/ ). A decrease in spending power of 86%. Inflation-adjusted monthly mortgage payments (the actual price that matters when it comes to housing) has actually gone down since 1989. This is on top of houses getting bigger. https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/03/what-if-housing-pri...
Comment linking /2021/03/what-if-housing-prices-arent-as-high-as-they-appear/
on “Labor shortage or terrible jobs?”Submitted Bull markets make you feel smarter than you are as a story · 125 points
HN discussionCorresponding post: * https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/03/what-if-housing-pri...
Comment linking /2021/03/what-if-housing-prices-arent-as-high-as-they-appear/
on “Home Price to Income Ratio”Submitted Why people make dumb financial decisions on purpose as a story · 120 points
HN discussion>As other's have pointed out there are a lot of significant factors being left out (e.g. interest rates). >though housing is extra difficult because the quality has also changed immensely (indoor plumbing, electricity, etc.). This blog goes over both those points. https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/03/what-if-housing-pri... tl;dr: 1. inflation adjusted mortgage payments are actually down 2. houses have gotten muc…
Comment linking /2021/03/what-if-housing-prices-arent-as-high-as-they-appear/
on “Home Price to Income Ratio”Submitted Why are so many unprofitable companies the best performing stocks this year? as a story · 104 points
HN discussionExactly. https://awealthofcommonsense.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/... That said, it doesn't do much for down payment.
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Screenshot-2021-03-20-101503-1024x741.jpg
on “Home Price to Income Ratio”Submitted The Most Counterintuitive Recession Ever as a story · 100 points
HN discussion"Home prices look remarkably stable when corrected for inflation. Over the 100 years ending in 1990 — before the recent housing boom — real home prices rose only 0.2 percent a year, on average. The smallness of that increase seems best explained by rising productivity in construction, which offset increasing costs of land and labor." From Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2013/04/rob…
Comment linking /2013/04/robert-shiller-on-real-estate-investments/
on “Housing Can’t Be Both Affordable and a Good Investment (2018)”Submitted How to Prepare for a Recession as a story · 92 points
HN discussionAccording to the article below, it seems like there’s a similar level of inequality in the stock market as well. https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/10/ownership-inequalit...
Comment linking /2021/10/ownership-inequality-in-the-stock-market/
on “Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners”Submitted It could be years until we see a normal housing market as a story · 90 points
HN discussionSounds like you need to meet Bob, the world's worst market timer: http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market-...
Comment linking /2014/02/worlds-worst-market-timer/
on “The Psychology of Money”Submitted A 19 basis point portfolio beats the average of most college endowments as a story · 90 points
HN discussionBen Carlson's economics blog has a post on what happened to housing prices in the past during periods of rising interest rates: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2022/01/will-higher-mortgag... . Short answer, home prices go up: "In fact, every prolonged rising rate environment I could find over the past 50 years saw housing prices grow when mortgage rates went up". From his chart, when mortgage rates went from 3.6% t…
Comment linking /2022/01/will-higher-mortgage-rates-derail-the-housing-market/
on “US Federal Reserve raises interest rates for first time since 2018”Submitted Today’s inflation is not a repeat of the 1970s as a story · 87 points
HN discussion> especially since the price of real estate went insane in the 2000s. And the monthly cost of mortgages went down over the 2000s: * https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/03/what-if-housing-pri...
Comment linking /2021/03/what-if-housing-prices-arent-as-high-as-they-appear/
on “Skimpflation: A reason inflation is worse than the government says it is”Submitted Are We Living in the Roaring 20s? as a story · 65 points
HN discussion
