Sound Investing

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Back from the Baltic and 12 of your questions

July 08, 2026

Paul returns from a two-week Baltic cruise refreshed and ready to dig into the numbers. He opens with a 12-month performance review of the recommended portfolios at Avantis, DFA and Vanguard — Avantis averaged 31.1% across the 10 equity asset classes in the Ultimate Buy and Hold, versus 27.7% at DFA and 26% at Vanguard — and explains why the non-traditional index funds keep outperforming traditional cap-weighted indexes.Paul also revisits Ben Carlson’s look at the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), w...

They're Back... Talking Real Money - Investing Talk

July 01, 2026

I joined my longtime friend Tom Cock for a special edition of Talking Real Money — a wide-ranging conversation about the evolution of indexing, the proposed changes to the S&P 500, and why investors should understand both the strengths and limitations of traditional index funds. I explain why firms like Dimensional Fund Advisors and Avantis Investors use a more flexible, evidence-based approach than traditional indexing, and how academic research has reshaped portfolio construction over t...

Ben Carlson and Paul Merriman on Full Disclosure

June 24, 2026

Paul Merriman joins host Roben Farzad on Full Disclosure for a rare conversation alongside Ben Carlson, director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth and author of the new book Risk and Reward: How to Handle Market Volatility and Build Long-Term Wealth. Roben called it a “truth teller tandem” — the first time these two have sat down together — and the result is an hour of warm, candid, data-grounded talk about how individual investors can actually succeed.The conversation open...