Tonight, The Hungry Monk?in Chandler combines two of my favorite things ? beer and bacon ? in a fundraiser for the Children?s Home Project.
A special menu will offer pork belly sliders with jalapeno slaw and siracha mayo (three for $8), a BLT made with extra-thick bacon and slathered with a beer-bacon aioli ($8) on Texas toast, and, for purists, a plate with slices of hickory, applewood, and sugar-cured bacon ($5).
Featured beers: Port Older Viscosity imperial stout ($7), Ballast Point Sculpin IPA?($6), Stone Farking Wheaton w00tstout?($6), Mother Road Lost Highway imperial black IPA?($5), and North Coast PranQster Belgian-style strong pale ale?($5).
The Monk also will be selling raffle tickets for a bunch of great swag. The event runs 5-9 p.m.
In other craft beer events today:
? World of Beer?in Tempe kicks off its four-day anniversary celebration with a?Firestone Walker Party featuring Union Jack, Double Jack, Wookey Jack, Pale 31, Pivo Pils, and unfiltered DBA on tap all day. Some special beers, such as Parabola, Double DBA, Sucuba, and Sixteen, will be tapped between 7-9 p.m.
? Sleepy Dog Pub in Gilbert hosts a Widmer tasting with?Brrrbon winter warmer, Marionberry hibiscus gose, Old Embalmer barley wine, Kill Devil barrel-aged brown, KGB- imperial stout, and Black IPA from 5:30-8:30 p.m.
Summer camp is traditionally a place where lots of kids get together, run around, swim, play games, maybe ride horses. And then there's one particular camp that's taken the games-playing to a new level.
A Largo, Fla.,?Country Day School summer camp has been running a "Hunger Games" themed tournament, where 26 young participants are expected to fight one another to the "death," as the young people in the fictional "Hunger Games" books and movies do.
In a piece reported by the Tampa Bay Times, the adolescents (of course) don't really fight to the death ? it's all playacting. But the way the kids take on their roles means they end up telling each other things like, "I will probably kill you first" and "I might stab you."?
The children "kill" one another by pulling flag belts from their enemy's waists, and the camper with the most "lives" at tournament's end wins.?
The story quoted clinical psychologist Susan Toler as saying the camp idea was "unthinkable," noting that "when (children) start thinking and owning and adopting and assuming (those killer) roles, it becomes close to them. The violence becomes less egregious."
In a statement posted to its blog, Country Day School denied that it encouraged violence. "Country Day School always prioritizes the emotional and physical safety of our students," the school wrote. "As we purposefully promote peace and kindness with all of our students, it is unthinkable that Country Day School would ever support or encourage violence."
The school also explained its decision to offer a "Hunger Games" camp: "After careful consideration, we decided to offer a camp for middle school students centered on 'The Hunger Games' in response to adolescent interest in the popular book trilogy. Our decision was predicated on the development of a curriculum that replaced any subjects of violence with positive themes of character development and team building."
The blog also offered?a video "that provides an accurate overview of the camp."
The camp has made some adjustments this year, changing the semantics of what the children were doing. They were no longer killing one another, but collecting lives. They also participated in team-building activities like the Minefield, where kids had to guide one another through verbal cues only through a field of cones, baseball gloves and Hula-Hoops.
The article ended, however, by showing that the camp was far from violence-free. One 11-year-old noted that he'd gotten "stepped on."?
"I'm sure it was an accident," said camp director Jared D'Alessio.
The boy begged to differ, saying he'd been knocked down. "I got stepped on," he said.
Country Day School denied the incident. "This misrepresentation and the suggestion that a child was hurt while in our care could not be further from the truth," the school wrote on its blog.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday strongly condemned the assassination of Tunisian opposition politicianMohamed Brahmi and called for a thorough investigation to bring those responsible before the courts.
"This is not the first political assassination since Tunisia's revolution and there is no justification for such outrageous and cowardly acts in a democratic Tunisia," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told a daily briefing.
"We urge the Tunisian government to immediately conduct a transparent and professional investigation to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice in a timely manner," she added.
(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Jackie Frank)
The idea that successful traders overcome or eliminate their emotions is completely off-base. If that were to truly happen, the trader would behave like a brain-damaged patient.? ? Brett Steenbarger
The point being that there is no form of trading or investing in which emotions do not play a role. One could argue that investors are in a constant state of stress. Even automated trading systems are in the end built by humans and maybe more importantly are monitored by humans. So the idea of emotionless investing is a pipe dream. That leaves for us the problem of how emotions affect, most often negatively, our investing.
Maybe we can get a better sense for how to invest by looking at those investors who have done a good job historically. Carl Richards writing at the Bucks Blog notes this intimate connection between emotions and decision making.
I think well-behaved investors are just better equipped than the average investor over the long haul. But they?ve also done something that the rest of us can do. They have acknowledged the connection between emotion and behavior.
The question for investors is how can they recognize and acknowledge their emotions while not letting them derail their already predetermined investment plans? This of course assumes you already have a written investment plan. If you don?t please write one out now! For the vast majority of investors a simple investment plan with as few moving parts as possible is the easiest path to follow.
Anna Prior at the WSJ had a piece up this week that talked about this very topic of simplicity in asset allocation. In the article she notes how a simple three-fund portfolio make up of US equities, US bonds and international equities provides investors with a sensible easily manageable portfolio. By focusing on a relatively small number of options it avoids the temptation to jump in and out of hot asset classes.
In one very real way a simple investing approach has taken hold in the fund world. The acknowledged rise of the target date mutual fund, especially as a default option for defined contribution plans, shows that investors are interested in a one-stop solution. In a very real sense target date funds can serve as a benchmark for investors who are looking to do it on their own. Target date funds certainly have their detractors but they provide individual investors in practice with a more workable solution than trying to do it themselves.
Some would like to go even farther. Felix Salmon at Reuters in a vintage post notes his interest in an ?everything bagel? fund. One that on an indexed basis invests in every investable asset class around the world. In short, a one-stop default investment. For many this would be an attractive option, a true throw up your hands default investment. We must recognize that there are some real shortcoming to a too simple approach.
James Picerno at the Capital Spectator acknowledges that a three fund solution has a certain appeal but is skeptical that it somehow absolves investors of the difficult decisions in investing. He writes:
In other words, don?t kid yourself into thinking that if you hold just three funds you?ll have an easier time of designing and managing a rebalancing strategy. Market volatility will continue to present you with challenging choices that demand steely discipline to sell when everybody else is buying, and vice versa.
Rebalancing is a big reason why a one or three-fund solution may be too simple. Additional asset classes can provide investors with the opportunity to generate returns through a disciplined rebalancing process. In addition additional degrees of freedom also makes the tax-harvesting process potentially fruitful. With increasing complexity more decisions and the risk of decision fatigue rears its ugly head. So as with most things in life we need to balance the potential gains from portfolio complexity with its obvious downsides.
It?s funny that simplicity should need a defense. However most of the time the media is chasing ephemeral trends driving us to change our portfolios in ways that in the long (and often short run) end up hurting us more than helping. That is why when we see simple advice, clearly stated we should take note.
Jason Zweig writing at MoneyBeat says all of this better than I can so I will leave you with an excerpt from a piece he wrote that in an elegant summarizes his career in investment writing and in the end touches on this topic of portfolio simplicity. He writes:
From financial history and from my own experience, I long ago concluded that regression to the mean is the most powerful law in financial physics: Periods of above-average performance are inevitably followed by below-average returns, and bad times inevitably set the stage for surprisingly good performance.
But humans perceive reality in short bursts and streaks, making a long-term perspective almost impossible to sustain ? and making most people prone to believing that every blip is the beginning of a durable opportunity.
My role, therefore, is to bet on regression to the mean even as most investors, and financial journalists, are betting against it. I try to talk readers out of chasing whatever is hot and, instead, to think about investing in what is not hot. Instead of pandering to investors? own worst tendencies, I try to push back. My role is also to remind them constantly that knowing what not to do is much more important than what to do. Approximately 99% of the time, the single most important thing investors should do is absolutely nothing.
Doing nothing is hard for us as investors. A simple, but not too simple portfolio, seems almost childish in this day and age. However a simple portfolio provides investors with the framework to ephemeral trends peddled by the media. In short it helps provide us some emotional distance between what we feel and what we actually do.
Items worth noting:
The role of somatic markers in trading.? (TraderFeed)
Is too much stress killing your portfolio?? (Enterprising Investor)
Lessons from well-behaved investors.? (Bucks Blog)
Choosing simplicity as a default.? (Abnormal Returns)
A portfolio that?s as simple as one, two, three.? (WSJ)
Invest like a chicken.? (Rick Ferri)
Are target-date funds aging well?? (Morningstar)
Less is more with simple ETF portfolios.? (IndexUniverse)
In search of an everything bagel.? (Felix Salmon)
Pondering simplicity in asset allocation.? (Capital Spectator)
Do you suffer from decision fatigue?? (NYTimes)
The Intelligent Investor: saving investors from themselves.? (MoneyBeat)
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