Disqus - Latest Comments for ethan

Re: Why We Scrapped 3.5 Months Of Development

ethan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:27:37 -0000

Hi Joel,

Thank you for your feedback, it really means a lot. I would love to bring back the landing page tool "new and better" once we have the resources to allocate to it.

Ping me via. email ethan (at) flowtown (dot) com and I'll be sure to keep you personally updated re: progress.

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: Why We Scrapped 3.5 Months Of Development

ethan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:25:16 -0000

Hi Andy,

Amazing feedback!! thank you :)

We're going to be doing some really exciting things around the follow-up marketing space from within Flowtown, so stay tuned.

P.S. Would love to chat via. phone and get your feedback re: new features and roadmap. Feel free to send me an email and we'll connect - ethan (at) flowtown (dot) com

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: Why We Scrapped 3.5 Months Of Development

ethan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:38:06 -0000

Thank you for the support Chris!

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: Part II: We Just Undid Three Months of Dev work. Here's What We Learned.

ethan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:27:30 -0000

Thank you for sharing. We're also about to roll back 3+ months of dev work :) #3 and 4 totally resonate. Before we started building our upcoming iteration I went out and showed it to 20+ potential customers. They all gave us tremendous feedback and the confidence to actually start building.

I love your thoughts around #3. I explain it as prioritizing the roadmap based on optimizing for revenue. When you start thinking like this all decision making become a lot easier.

I believe it was the founder and/or CEO of Southwest who once said, I have the easiest job in the world, whenever a decisions comes across my desk I just ask myself one question 'Is this going to help make us the lowest cost carrier?'

Re: Get Satisfaction on your iPhone App | Broadersheet iPhone Edition

hejog — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:50:30 -0000

As Jeff said above, I guess the best way is to speak with our votes at: http://getsatisfaction.com/getsatisfaction/topi...

or switch to a better product :)

Re: Get Satisfaction on your iPhone App | Broadersheet iPhone Edition

ethan — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:28:09 -0000

Bravo! In full agreement across the board. It always bothered me that Get Satifaction requires you to register in order give feedback. I guess they figure if you care enough you'll register. Which via. web is doable via. iPhone, "forget about it"

Re: Your Secret Weapon: Follow-Up

ethan — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:36:48 -0000

It's awesome! Definitely share your thoughts when you're finished.

Re: Benefit-Driven Metrics: Measure the lives you save, not the life preservers you sell

ethan — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:07:43 -0000

Thanks for fleshing this out. You are dead-on. However I do think a focus on both, the business of value extraction & value creation, is important. There are lots of ways to add/create value which may never translate into a profitable businesses. Finding that right mix (i.e. Walmart "everyday low prices, our margins are 3.5% but we move close to half a billion in product each year, so we're making bank") is crucial to the long term viability of any business. Thoughts?

Re: It’s All About The Conversions

ethan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:05:20 -0000

Thanks Vanessa. You're totally on-point. And once you have a system that works you just turn up the traffic dial... monitoring quality and conversation rates of course :)

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: It’s All About The Conversions

ethan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:02:49 -0000

Hi Elaine,

To start, the best approach is to see what is working for other people is similar businesses. Once you mimic their best practices it's all about tweaking and testing.

We'll be sure to queue up some future blog posts elaborating on this.

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Big Hairy Audacious Goals for Startups

ethan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:12:05 -0000

Awesome post. Great way to flesh out this concept i.e. what startups should be focusing on, a la their true north.

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

ethan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:14:59 -0000

Hi Andrew,

In regards to college finance I would take a look at my friends http://www.hackcollege.com/ they don't solely focus on finance, but they do discuss it.

In addition it's an all around great blog for college students.

Feel free to send me any direct questions at ethan (at) thewaytobuildwealth.org

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Rock On: 2008 Recap. 2009 Preview. - Episode #35

ethan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:05:41 -0000

Thanks Adrian!

Unfortunately TWTBW is on permanent hiatus :(

However, feel free to send me any questions re: past episodes at ethan (at) thewaytobuildwealth.org

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

ethan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:44:01 -0000

Hi Pavel,

A big thanks to you for your support. Please see the comment above.

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

ethan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:43:17 -0000

Hi Thai,

That really means a lot. Super humbling. Thanks so much for your support!

Unfortunately TWTBW is on permanent hiatus. I hope to find the time to being it back soon. Or at least do some additional episodes that I've been wanting to produce.

I'm grateful to have been able to, at the very least, share some fundamental insights that most people can prosper from.

Until next time :)

Cheers,

Ethan

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

cmon — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:59:51 -0000

i hope you get back soon too!

Re: Mutual Funds Suck - Episode #12

Financial Planning with David — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:59:21 -0000

Ethan,

What I have learned about how markets are made efficient comes mostly from Dr. Brook who is a managing partner with Dr. Charlton at B.H. Equity (he's the guy who developed the Student Managed Investment Fund - aka Spider).

Obviously there are a lot of people in this country alone that effect the earnings of a company which then affect the information that traders end up with. But, it's the active traders and investors interpreting that info and acting on it that makes the market efficient.

The simple answer is that information drives markets. The faster the information comes to markets, the better. The better the information, the more accurate the [potential] stock price.

What constitutes "the best" though is determined by traders giving a rational analysis of the information they are given within the context of their lives and work (based on whatever their pre-existing knowledge is) and then acting on their knowledge for profit.

If they fail, then the information wasn't "the best". It's like...it always gets me to hear people say that "so and so dropped dead while he was out on his daily jog...I don't get it, he was healthy as a horse!" ...well obviously not if he dropped dead. There were OBVIOUSLY other as-yet unknown health problems.

Good information is only good if it's producing profits for you.

You'll still have conflicts between what is considered "the best" information, but that's OK. Two perfectly rational people can have a different view of what the value of a company is worth based on their knowledge and experience.

This leads to different skill levels of investors and traders, which will lead to inefficiencies depending on your skill at determining what the information really means in regards to the value of a given company.

You have to keep in mind that there are a lot of ways that the price of a stock can become mis-priced, which represents inefficiency in the market. This is just one example:

You have multitude of individuals who are not as good as the expert traders buying and selling stocks. They're not even really concerned with making 100% annual returns. They are just doing what some talking head on T.V. told them to do.

For example, let's say you have mom and pop. And mom and pop get paid every Friday, and every payday they decide to put a portion of their money into "xyz stock" or mutual fund.

They've been doing this for a while now, and so have 2 million other mom and pops. This might cause a small pattern to develop in the markets where stock prices move according to the buying /selling done by all those mom and pops on Friday.

It's a small anomaly, but it causes a noticeable change in the financial markets and a *temporary* mis-pricing of certain equities.

The best traders out there then pick up on these developing trends to wipe out the anomaly. In this way, they are setting more accurate prices and making the market more efficient.

If a trader comes along with better information, they set even more accurate prices by trading on that information. They're not there to save the manatees, of course, they are doing this with the primary goal of maximizing profits to themselves or their firm. The effect is that the best information available is reflected in any given stock's price (notice I said "best" not "all") thus making the market as efficient as possible.

For passive investors, it means that they don't have to worry about a lot of active trading because someone else is already doing that, and the prices of the underlying equities in those index mutual funds is going to be very accurate at any given point in time.

Dave

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

Pavel Zaitsev — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:58:38 -0000

Same here, love the day of the week theme, love to wake up and get to going to your videos while learning a bit of stuff. Hope your daily videos will start up soon.

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

Thai — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:19:19 -0000

Hope youre back soon man..

Personal finance feeds tend to run bland without a fresh dose of quality investment how-to's once in a while, Bloch n Buffet style :D

Thai

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

ethan — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:14:34 -0000

Hi sfkid,

Glad you've been enjoying the videos. We will eventually discuss buying individual stocks. However it may not be for a little while.

I've recently had some pressing personal issues (nothing bad... actually quite good). I will be release a video soon to update everyone.

Thanks for your patience and understanding!

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: Mutual Funds Suck - Episode #12

ethan — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:09:15 -0000

Hi David,

Thanks for the great comment. You definitely bring up a valid point.

If all investable dollars in the world were Indexed you are right, it would cause quite a problem. However an everybody indexing scenario is highly improbable because investors will surely take advantage off created arbitrageur opportunities created by the mass herding into Indexed assets and this would most likely bring back some form of market equilibrium (this is total speculation on what would actually happen, just my take as I play it out in my head).

Furthermore it really isn't worth worrying about the world indexing. The total amount of invested dollars that are Indexed pales in comparison to total invested dollars. You also have to remember that even the total amount of invested dollars in Index funds, is in a wide variety of assets and asset classes. Not everyone who Indexes buys a Total Stock Market Index Funds or a S&P 500 Index Fund.

I find it hard to believe that traders keep the market efficient. I would love to see some research on this assumption.

I'm going to leave it there for tonight. Thanks for the great comment!

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: Mutual Funds Suck - Episode #12

David — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:45:35 -0000

you said>>>The average person shouldn't be looking for someone to manage their money<<<

I agree. I dislike managed mutual funds with a passion. But there's more to it than that. Index investing does work, but you are still relying on other people to make that strategy work - namely the active traders that buy and sell stock in order to make the market efficient enough for you to just sit back and take advantage of the information as it comes to the market.

I think you would be terribly disappointed if literally EVERYONE adopted this strategy. There would be no one setting the prices and your index fund would be worthless...you would have the exact same problem that you are ascribing to actively managed funds.

In short, index investing works as long as a *minority* of investors are using the strategy. The "myth" as it were of the EMH is that information comes to the market instantaneously (or too quickly for anyone to capitalize on it).

The truth is that nothing happens that quickly. You wouldn't have successful traders beating the market every day on their own...and you definitely wouldn't have Peter Lynches and Warren Buffets.

While I don't see anything wrong per se with passive investing, just don't forget who butters your bread :o)

Re: Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS): What Are They? - Episode #39

ethan — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:17:12 -0000

Hey J-man,

LOL, gnarly skin disease was a perfect description :) Vimeo's been acting weird lately, maybe it has something to do with all the updates they've been pushing live to the site.

Thanks for the heads-up though! We are re-compressing the video and updating the Vimeo upload.

Cheers.

Ethan

Re: The 4-Fund + 1 Portfolio - Episode #38

ethan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:20:17 -0000

Hi Thai!

I think that looks great. Quite a simple portfolio. I should note there are both Tax Deferred retirement accounts (Traditional IRA) and Tax Free Retirement Accounts (Roth IRA).

See the rest of my notes below:

(3) If you had to, you could loose the Treasury Bond Fund, in the tax-deferred account. Not really necessary since you'll have Treasury debt exposure through VMMXX. Maybe replace with TIPS fund, new episode covering them in detail coming out Wednesday.
(4) It's not tax deferred money market fund, just Tax-Free :)

An answer to your final question is difficult due to the word reasonable. All of the small cap stocks are included in a TSM fund, the thing is they account for a small percentage allocation of the portfolio because they have such small market caps. The S&P 500 accounts for about 80% of all stock market value in the United States, which means the other 4500 companies account for just 20%. So even though you will have direct exposure to Small Cap stocks in a TSM fund, the exposure will be small when compared to S&P 500 exposure.

I will be covering Small Cap funds soon, but don't let this change your direction; you are on the right path as is. Plus, if the mood strikes you can always add a Small Cap Value fund down the road.

** IMPORTANT UPDATE **

There will be no episode released on Tuesday, January 20th. I had a last minute seminar pop-up and didn't have time to prepare an episode for Tuesday. We will be back on Wednesday, January 21st.

Thanks for your understanding.

Ethan Bloch
Host, The Way to Build Wealth

Re: Rock On: 2008 Recap. 2009 Preview. - Episode #35

ethan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:31:08 -0000

Hi Nick!

Don't hate us, but we stopped all the of themed days.

When we went back and looked at past episodes we noticed that the themes were taking up a too much time, sometimes 3-4 minutes. That just doesn't make sense when we're trying to keep the entire episode in the 5-6 minute range.

I definitely miss them, but it's for the best.

Cheers.

Ethan

R.I.P. Themed days :(