If you have read me for any length of time, you know I am less than enthralled with much of what passes for financial news.

Shopmas now begins on Thanksgiving Day. Apparently, escaping the families you cannot stand to spend another minute with on Thanksgiving Day to go buy them gifts is how some Americans show their affection for one another. Weird.

Footage of people camped out at Best Buy or elsewhere is not remotely a celebration. Rather, it's a reminder of just how economically distressed a large percentage of our populace is.

The bottom line is this: Cash, in modest increments, has a role in any portfolio. But unless you are Warren Buffett, you should limit it to 2 or 3 percent.

When markets are rallying, cash in the portfolio is a drag on performance, returning about zero.

A hedge fund manager whose clients demand monthly performance reports has different needs than any individual investors with a 20-year time horizon. The needs of that long-term investor differ markedly from someone who is retiring in three years.

Much of the traditional thinking about cash is well intentioned but unrealistic. Should you have six months of living expenses in the bank for emergencies? Sure. Do you? Probably not.

When you buy anything with lots of leverage, it does not require a whole lot to go wrong to lose it all.

Any investment bought via credit always runs the risk of margin calls and, eventually, liquidation.

Salesmen always need something to sell.

We love a tale of heroes and villains and conflicts requiring a neat resolution.

Google's founders have had a good eye for imagining what technologies will be significant in the near future. No one asked Google to develop self-driving cars, but it helped them with street views for Google Maps.

Most of Google's home technologies have failed to catch on in a major way.

I credit Google for having the foresight to identify threats to its main business of selling advertising against search results. The potential loss of market share in the mobile space led them to the Android acquisition.

History is replete with examples of tech firms that were marginalized by new companies and technologies.

I have been a member of the Microsoft-bashing society for quite some time.

Rather than engage in the sort of selective retention that so many investors tend to do and pretend mistakes never happened, I prefer to 'own' them. This allows me to learn from them and, with any luck, avoid making the same errors again.

Indeed, eventually, random outcomes all revert to the mean, meaning that streaks eventually end. Understanding this is a key part of intelligent and rational investing.

Any Wall Street advertising that does not go into the boring details of methodology is most likely to be pushing past performance.

You can blow on the dice all you want, but whether they come up 'seven' is still a function of random luck.

Outcome is simply the final score: Who won the game; what numbers came up in a roll of the dice; how high did a stock go. Outcome is the result, regardless of the method used to achieve it. It is not controllable.

A well-designed 401(k) plan is an enormous competitive edge when recruiting and retaining employees.

Often, investors will discover a manager after he's had a terrific run, usually when he lands on a magazine cover somewhere. Invariably, funds swell up with new investor money just before they revert to their long-term averages.

Active management leads to lots of poor investor behavior. It sends people chasing after whoever has the hot hand at the moment.