I’ve posted Podcast #46 to the “RobCasts” section of the site. It’s called Investing Is a Science (When It’s Not Science Fiction).

This is an issue that should bring Passive Investors and Rational Investors together (I believe that it will do so somewhere down the road a stretch). The big innovation of Passive Investing was to make investing a more scientific endeavor. The problem is that the Passive Investing advocates made some serious mistakes (humans!) and now need to fix them. But they somehow have gotten the idea in their heads that scientists never get anything wrong. Not so. True scientists learn from their mistakes. The idea behind Rational Investing is to take seriously the advocacy of the use of science in investing first promoted by Passive Investing advocates.

Programming Note: The blog will return on Monday, January 5, 2009, with its usual blend of soft science and hard silliness.

The message on the Christmas card I sent out this year reads: “…and the Passive Investor shall lie down with the Rational Investor.” For reasons beyond the reach of human comprehension, God elected to throw us all together and charge us with the responsibility of finding a way to make it all work out. My sincere take.

A merry Christmas to Normals, Goons, and “Experts” alike!