When most people hear the term “institutional investor,” they think of large pension plans, endowments, insurance companies, and Wall Street firms managing billions of dollars. “Retail investing” boils down to individuals investing through retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, or self-managed portfolios. Most people assume the difference between the two comes down to size. Institutions have more...

Not long ago, I ordered something online and found myself checking the tracking page way more often than necessary. The package wasn’t late, nothing had gone wrong, and from what I could tell, everything was moving exactly as planned, yet every few hours I’d still pull up the app, watching that little truck icon crawl...

Money is emotional long before it is mathematical. I say that not as a theory, but from experience, both professionally and personally. Over nearly a decade in the financial industry, I’ve had hundreds of conversations with clients, business owners, and families who are intelligent, capable, and still making emotionally driven financial decisions. Not because they’re...

Twenty-five years ago this week, I dropped my son off at school and drove past Blount Memorial Hospital to my office at PaineWebber in Maryville. I was an old-fashioned stockbroker in those days. The Internet was still in its infancy. Social media didn’t exist. My morning routine was scanning a few investment message boards and...