One Shilling: The Difference Between Happiness and Misery

Following on from yesterday's Lottery Losers post, and a timely tale today of someone who apparently has trouble managing their money: 

Johnny Depp's former business managers counter-sued the actor on Tuesday claiming his lavish lifestyle that cost more than $2 million a month to maintain caused his recent financial troubles and that the star ignored their repeated warnings.

The counter-suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by The Management Group comes about two weeks after Depp sued the company alleging it grossly mismanaged his earnings.

The lawsuit said Depp paid more than $75 million to buy and maintain 14 homes, including a French chateau and a chain of islands in the Bahamas.

Depp also spent heavily to buy a 150-foot yacht, fly on private jets and cultivate collections of fine art and Hollywood memorabilia requiring 12 storage facilities to maintain, the lawsuit said.

Depp was repeatedly warned by the company that his spending was out of control but ignored his former advisors' advice to control his spending, the lawsuit said.

"Depp, and Depp alone, is fully responsible for any financial turmoil he finds himself in today," the lawsuit stated.

Depp sued The Management Group on Jan. 13 seeking more than $25 million he contends was mismanaged. His lawsuit also alleged the company failed to file Depp's taxes on time, costing him $5.7 million in penalties.

Possibly the most distressing part of this story was the writer using the same word at the beginning of four consecutive paragraphs!   

More seriously though, as Wilkins Micawber put it: 

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and six pence, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Sadly, I am old enough to remember shillings and (old) pennies. 

The Crazy AAPL guy had a torrid day with AAPL closing at a crisp: 

So much for 120 or less, and perhaps the story was genuine. Only the poster knows for sure, but here's one commenter's take on it:

I was there during the live stream. The emotions fscomeau showed, seemed to be pretty legitimate. The pre-earnings anxiety, and nervous-like talking, to distract his mind. The second-by-second gesture, and watching him input numbers into Excel, showing what his gain or (loss) was - and the emotions that rocked him, were all too real - and reminiscent of my own past experiences.

I will give him the benefit of the doubt, given his explanation as to using the demo account. (Which he explained was used to cover up his account name, etc. He also posted an actual picture of his losses earlier on reddit. Yes, I know it can be photo-shopped - but given what I just spoke about (emotion) I'm giving the benefit of doubt).

It was painful to watch. At 125.00 his loss was $150,000, so at 128.75 he's pretty much lost the lot, down around $270,000.

My days of trading options and futures are long behind me now, and my holdings of individual shares are limited to a handful, well six to be precise - it's a side-effect of living downwind of Windscale. 

Index funds might be boring, but they're hard to beat long-term. As Scott Adams said on the top of high-cost active v low-cost passive investing:

I can think of many cases in which I would recommend active money managers over index funds. For example, I might be giving the advice to someone I hate or—and this happens a lot—someone I expect to hate later. I would also recommend active money managers if I were accepting bribes to do so, if I were an active money manager myself, or if it were April Fools' Day. And let's also consider the possibility that I might be drunk, stupid or forced to say things at gunpoint. I've also heard good things about a German emotion called schadenfreude, so that could be a factor too.