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European and Asian diplomats have claimed a territorial settlement in Ukraine could send a “dangerous message”

Officials in Western Europe and Asia have claimed US President Donald Trump's reported framework to end the Ukraine conflict could set a precedent for territorial conquest, CNN reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources.

The framework, which has not been officially confirmed by the White House, reportedly includes US recognition of Crimea as Russian territory and acknowledgement of Moscow’s control over large parts of four former Ukrainian regions that have joined Russia. US Vice President J.D. Vance has also stated that the administration is considering the option to “freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today.”

CNN cited several unnamed diplomats who criticized the proposed settlement, claiming it would “reward” Russian President Vladimir Putin and send a “dangerous message” to other leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping.

“This is about the fundamental principles of international law,” one Eastern European diplomat told CNN, claiming that “if one country in Europe is forced to give up parts of its own legal territory… no country in Europe or elsewhere can feel safe, NATO or no NATO.”

Moscow has repeatedly denied having any intention to strike NATO or EU countries, or claim their territories, accusing Western officials of “fearmongering” in order to justify further militarization.

Nevertheless, many Eastern European governments, such as Poland and the Baltic states, have cited the supposed threat of a Russian attack as justification for increasing defense budgets and deploying additional forces. 

The CNN report comes as US special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to meet with Russian officials in Moscow for another round of talks in the coming days. Trump has warned that Washington could abandon its diplomatic efforts altogether if no significant progress is made in the peace effort soon.

Trump has publicly expressed frustration with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, whom he has accused of obstructing peace efforts by refusing to even consider any territorial concessions. At the same time, the US president has suggested that he has found Russia easier to negotiate with than Ukraine. 

Moscow has welcomed the Trump administration’s attempts to settle the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated this week that Moscow and Washington are “moving in the right direction” with regard to reaching a peace deal.

Russian officials have repeatedly said that Moscow remains open to a negotiated solution, but have emphasized that any peace agreement must reflect the territorial realities on the ground and address the root causes of the conflict.

The US president has claimed that even Zelensky understands the peninsula will remain under Moscow’s control in a final settlement

The Crimean Peninsula will remain a part of Russia under a final settlement of the Ukraine conflict, US President Donald Trump has said in an interview with Time Magazine published on Friday.

Crimea officially joined the Russian Federation in 2014 after a referendum that followed a Western-backed coup in Kiev. Ukraine and its backers have dismissed the results of the referendum as illegitimate, and Kiev has continued to claim sovereignty over the peninsula, vowing to take it back by any means necessary.

In an interview to mark his first 100 days in office, Trump said Crimea “went to the Russians” long ago and suggested that “everyone understands” that Ukraine will not be able to get it back.

“Crimea will stay with Russia” under a final settlement of the Ukraine conflict, Trump went on to say, adding that even Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky understands this. “It’s been with them for a long time,” the US president stated, noting that Russia had its submarines there “long before any period that we’re talking about” and that the majority of Crimeans speak Russian.

Trump also stressed that the peninsula was “given” to Russia by former US President Barack Obama, claiming that the whole conflict is “Obama’s war,” which “should have never happened.”

Since returning to office in January, Trump has been pressuring both Moscow and Kiev to settle the conflict. During last year’s election campaign, he said he would end the hostilities “within 24 hours” of entering the White House. He told Time, however, that he said this “figuratively” as an “exaggeration.”

Recently, Trump has signaled that he has grown frustrated with the lack of progress on reaching a resolution of the Ukraine conflict. He has expressed dissatisfaction with Zelensky, saying he has found Russia much easier to negotiate with than the Ukrainian leader. In a Truth Social post this week, the US president criticized Zelensky for refusing to even consider any territorial concessions.

Russia has expressed its appreciation for Trump’s peace efforts and has repeatedly indicated that it is open to negotiations. However, Russian officials have stressed that a final peace deal must respect the territorial realities on the ground and address the root causes of the conflict, such as Ukraine’s NATO aspirations.

In his interview with Time, Trump acknowledged that Ukraine would likely never be able to join NATO. He cited Kiev’s ambitions to enter the US-led bloc as the issue that “caused the war to start.”

“If that weren’t brought up, there would have been a much better chance that [the conflict] wouldn’t have started,” he said.

ROME – Fundamentally, every conclave shapes up as a referendum on the papacy that just ended: Do we want to keep going in the same direction, or do we want to change?

After the death of John Paul II in 2005, the vote was overwhelming for continuity, which is how you got to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, John Paul’s right-hand man, as Pope Benedict XVI in just four ballots; in 2013 the decision was massively for change, explaining the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires as Pope Francis in just five.

If we assume the same choice will shape the 2025 edition, then it’s worth asking who the continuity candidate might be this time – and it’s hard to think of a more obvious answer than 69-year-old Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, arguably as close to a potential “Pope Francis II” as one will find among the plausible contenders.

Not only is his background in the Community of Sant’Egidio, by far Francis’s favorite among the “new movements” in the Catholic Church, but Francis gave Zuppi the historically influential post in Bologna in 2015, chose him as president of the Italian conference in 2022, and also tapped Zuppi in 2023 as his personal peace envoy for the war in Ukraine. Short of pointing a finger and publicly shouting, “This is my beloved son, upon whom my favor rests,” it’s difficult to think of anything else a pontiff might do to signal that someone has his trust.

Zuppi returned the favour, backing Francis at every controversial turn during his papacy, from the decision in 2015 to open a cautious door to communion for Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the church – Zuppi called it a blow for “closeness” to people doing their best – to the 2024 authorisation of blessings for people in same-sex unions, which he said placed the church “on the horizon of mercy”.

His liberal credentials certainly aren’t in any doubt. For instance, he contributed the foreword to the Italian edition of American Jesuit Father James Martin’s 2017 book Building a Bridge, arguing for greater tolerance and inclusivity for the LGBT community.

A native Roman, Zuppi was born in 1955 as the fifth of six children. He was almost literally born into ecclesiastical service: His father Enrico was the longtime editor of an illustrated weekly supplement to L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, while his mother was the niece of the legendary Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri, a veteran Vatican official who played a key role in the Second Vatican Council and later became the very first prefect of the newly created Congregation for Bishops.

In 1973, at the tender age of 18, Zuppi’s life took a turn when he met the then 23-year-old Andrew Riccardi, a lay Catholic intellectual and activist who, five years before, had founded the Community of Sant’Egidio. Reflecting the idealistic impulses of Vatican II, Riccardi originally conceived the group’s mission as serving poor students in popular schools in rough neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city of Rome.

As time went on, Sant’Egidio took on a bewildering variety of other roles, from ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue to conflict resolution, all basically inspired by the progressive energies unleashed by the council.

At every step, Zuppi was at Riccardi’s side. He became the pastor of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, where Sant’Egidio holds its famous evening vespers services that attract throngs of secularised young Romans who otherwise would never darken the door of a Catholic Church, and in the early 1990s, he became part of the Sant’Egidio team that helped negotiate an end to a long-running civil war in Mozambique.

So strong is the bond between Zuppi and Riccardi that the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, a conservative who tended to look askance at the Sant’Egidio phenomenon, once warned that if Zuppi should emerge wearing white from the conclave, the “real pope” would be Riccardi.

In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI made Zuppi an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Rome. When Francis took the reins in 2013, his enthusiasm for Sant’Egidio was immediately evident – during one of his first Sunday Angelus addresses, he spotted a banner from the group in the crowd and blurted, “Those guys from Sant’Egidio are great!”

Francis didn’t waste much time elevating the cleric most identified with the community, naming Zuppi Archbishop of Bologna in 2015. It was a symbolically charged choice, since the liberal Catholic energies associated with the so-called “Bologna School” have long seen themselves as the keeper of the flame for Vatican II in Italian Catholicism.

Zuppi’s later appointment by the pope as president of the powerful Italian bishops’ conference made him a national and international point of reference.

The case for Zuppi as pope?

First and foremost, his election would solidify and, at least to some extent, institutionalise Pope Francis’s legacy. He’s cut from the same cloth, and given his lifetime of experience inside the ecclesiastical system, he arguably would know how to pick the personnel and to create the structures to make that legacy more invulnerable to being rolled back.

In a time when the uncertainties and pressures of geopolitics are seen as a key voting issue in the conclave, Zuppi also brings hard-won international experience, most recently from his missions to Russia, China and the U.S. as part of his diplomatic roadshow related to the Ukraine war – even if some would point out that his mission didn’t really produce many concrete results, even at the basic humanitarian level of prisoner exchanges or the return of forcibly removed children.

Zuppi is also seen as a gifted pastor, whose 19-year run at Santa Maria in Trastevere gave him a deep understanding of how to engage and inspire a staggering variety of people. He was seen as especially successful at reaching young adults, but his affable and outgoing personality made him popular with pretty much all demographic groups.

Why not Zuppi?

The fear of him being overly beholden to a particular movement in Catholicism is real, especially one that’s already seen with resentment in some circles for what critics regard as a relentless drive for self-promotion and a tendency to infiltrate circles of power wherever possible. Veteran Italian columnist Sandro Magister recently wrote that a Zuppi papacy would be dominated by an “external oligarchy, or, rather, a monocracy”, referring to the overwhelming influence of Riccardi and Sant’Egidio.

In addition, there’s also some sense that Zuppi may be a bit too political to be seen as a fair broker to all parties. Last year, he publicly voiced doubts about a proposed constitutional reform to allow for the direct election of Italy’s prime minister, in what was seen as a clear break with a key priority of the country’s conservative government under Giorgia Meloni.

Most basically, however, the objection to Zuppi is that he’s simply too identified with the Francis era, and if you’re looking for a change, he’s not your candidate.

One thing no one disputes about Matteo Zuppi is that at a personal level, he’s a truly nice guy who’s almost impossible not to like. It remains to be seen whether, in this case too, nice guys really do finish last.

(Photo by FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP via Getty Images)

The post Papabile of the day: Cardinal Zuppi first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post Papabile of the day: Cardinal Zuppi appeared first on Catholic Herald.

Social democrat Cansel Kiziltepe has linked a slump in the car maker’s sales to CEO Elon Musk’s “far-right positions”

A Berlin senator has branded Elon Musk’s Tesla a “Nazi car,” while commenting on the company’s declining sales. Social democrat Cansel Kiziltepe attacked the electric vehicle maker in a now-deleted post on X on Wednesday.

Musk has faced criticism in the EU for his perceived right-wing political views. He was condemned in Germany for endorsing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, and in the wider EU for being a close ally of US President Donald Trump, whose policies on issues such as diversity and the Ukraine conflict do not align with those of Brussels.

Musk in turn has accused the EU of censorship, bureaucratic overreach, and economic harm, often framing the bloc’s policies as stifling free speech and national autonomy.

“Who wants to drive a Nazi car? Electric car manufacturers are experiencing a sales boom – apart from Tesla,” Kiziltepe, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the senator for labour, social affairs, equality, integration, diversity and anti-discrimination of the state of Berlin, wrote on X.

The post drew sharp criticism from officials in the neighboring state of Brandenburg, home to Tesla’s only car factory in Europe. Brandenburg's minister-president, Dietmar Woidke, slammed it as being “completely out of place,” while the state’s economic minister, Daniel Keller, demanded that Kiziltepe retract her statement.

The post has since been deleted, although Kiziltepe has defended her position, stating on X on Friday that she “expressly stands” by her assessment of Musk, and linking Tesla’s slump in sales to “the far-right positions” of its CEO.

In the first quarter of this year, Tesla vehicle deliveries dropped globally by 13% year-on-year, automotive revenue slumped 20% and net income plunged by 71%.

Tesla’s Gigafactory near Berlin was targeted by protesters earlier this year when the word “heil” was seen projected onto its wall next to the automaker’s logo, spelling the message “Heil Tesla.” During a campaign ceremony marking Trump’s inauguration in January, Musk made a gesture that his critics interpreted as a Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute. Musk dismissed the accusations as politically motivated.

The billionaire has previously voiced his support of Germany’s right-wing AfD, a rival to the ruling SPD. Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Musk’s backing of the AfD “disgusting.” Economic Minister Robert Habeck also accused the entrepreneur of launching a “frontal attack” on democracy.

READ MORE: Germany faces third year of zero growth – media

The AfD secured 20.8% of the vote in the German federal election in February, becoming the country’s second-largest party. Immigration and economic discontent were cited as among the key factors behind the party’s success.

The increasing pace of scientific discoveries, including the race to put a man on the moon in the late 1950s, meant that there was widespread enthusiasm and support for science in the 20th century. In addition, science produced the first oral contraceptive pill which started to be marketed in 1960. The Pill showed that science could be a major ulterior force for changing society.

Pope St John XXIII had made reference to the marvellous progress of science in his day and on the need for science.[1] The feeling was that through science modern society would be able to give a better life to all and that the Church had to keep up with this inexorable progress. This appeared to be the principal motivation for calling of Second Vatican Council aggiornamento or the bringing of the Church up to speed.

Professor Roberto Mattei has revealed behind-the-scenes activity during the Council.[2] Apart from aggiornamento John XXIII did not appear to have an agenda but sought input from all the participants about what needed to be discussed. The number of participants asking for Communism to be denounced at the Council was greater than any other request. This however never happened despite both John XXIII and Pope St Paul VI having read the secrets of Fatima and knowing Our Lady had warned about Russia spreading its errors. It was a major flaw of the Council. In the end the Council embraced ecumenism, religious freedom and inter-religious dialogue and state-church separation.[3] Russia was effectively free to spread its errors, and the Catholic Church was no longer insisting on being the only source of truth. The demands of a secular world made the Church move from a position of motivation by spirit and truth to motivation by empathy and mercy.

If we go back to what motivated John XXIII to bring the Council, it seemed to be the excitement that with science the world was moving quickly forward and all problems could be solved. The major motivator of changes in the world in the 1960s was scientific discovery: publicly everyone was excited about space exploration, privately about contraception. Through contraception, however, science helped secularise society. Initially, many in the Church saw contraception as a science-driven advance for society rather than an improper use of science. Pope Paul VI belatedly but bravely stood up against contraception but the Church did not see itself as having jurisdiction over the scientific world. Pope Paul rather gently chided scientists that they might have “peace of conscience”[4] if their methods did not stop the transmission of life. He also might have issued a stern warning to pharmaceutical companies and pharmacists if he realised the huge market that contraception was opening up for them.

The Church has been repeatedly told it was against science. However, modern science arose out of the fact that in the Bible, God is shown to be very vested in the temporal world. This led to the development of calculus and inductive scientific reasoning.[5] Pope St John Paul II confirmed Galileo and Gaudium et Spes (36) that faith and science can never be at odds with each other.[6] Not only is the Church not against science but science is the only source of truth aside from revelation – a gift of God to both religious and secular mankind. It should therefore be at the centre of the Church’s orbit, and in the Church’s dealings with the secular world, as a common trusted language. Also, church-state separation makes no sense if science can be used by both church and state as both should come to the same conclusions in keeping with natural law, since natural law is written in everyone’s heart.[7] It would seem that the aggiornamento of Second Vatican Council might have been better for the Church, had it been centred on firmly co-opting science into the Church.[8]

[1] Veterum Sapientia 4.

[2] De Mattei, R. (2010) Il Concilio Vaticano II, una storia mai scritta. Torino, Lindau. p. 492.

[3] Cf. Dignitatis Humanae 15.

[4] Humanae Vitae 24.

[5] Pullicino, P. (2023) The Science of Ezekiel’s Chariot of YHWH Vision. Richmond, Tiger of the Stripe. p. 255.

[6] Fides et Ratio 29.

[7] Gilson, E. (1956) The Christian Philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas. Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press. p. 267. Valid interpretation of scientific results is still dependent on spiritual guidance (Pullicino, P. (2023) Ibid. p.250)

[8] This might be achieved by a) setting up a dicastery for science, b) becoming involved in research, (particularly into negative effects of science (e.g. contraception, abortion) that remain unpublished), c) highlighting unethical science: basic science, stem cell/embryo or clinical research. d) highlighting immoral practice in hospitals: beating heart donors, abortion wards, end of life “care” e) applying science to optimise health of clergy and to biblical study (cf. footnote 5).

( Photo: The Council Fathers seated during the Second Vatican Council. The bishop in the front row is Aimé-Georges Martimort (credit Lothar Wolleh.)

The post Science, contraception, and the missed opportunity of Vatican II first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post Science, contraception, and the missed opportunity of Vatican II appeared first on Catholic Herald.

Are you a "speculator" or an "investor"? This is an essential question that every individual deploying capital into the financial markets must answer. The reason is that how you answer that question determines how you should behave during market cycles. Over the last 15 years, due to repeated rounds of monetary and fiscal interventions, most investors are simply chasing performance. However, why would you NOT expect this to happen when financial advisers, the mainstream media, and Wall Street continually press the idea that investors "must beat" some random benchmark index from one year to the next?

However, if you are only chasing performance, are you an "investor" or a "speculator"

While some may hold a negative connotation of being called a "speculator," that would be incorrect. However, it is critical to understand the difference, as being a "speculator" in financial markets requires a different set of "rules" than being an "investor."

Let's begin our discussion with a definition of both.

• Speculator: A person who utilizes strategies within a shorter time frame, attempting to outperform traditional longer-term investors. Speculators take on risk, especially when anticipating future price movements, hoping to make large gains to offset the risk.
• Investor: A person who systematically grows wealth by buying assets with reasonable levels of risk in exchange for long-term growth. 

I asked ChatGPT to provide a table of the key differences between being an investor and a speculator.

When you examine your approach and expectations of investment returns, which definition describes you?

There is nothing wrong with either approach, but each requires a very different set of rules and expectations.

But no rule says you can't be a little bit of both.

Investor Meets Speculator

As portfolio managers, we are, by nature, long-term investors. We focus on fundamental data like free cash flow, return on invested capital, earnings growth rates, and sales. While fundamental investing certainly provides better long-term returns, it becomes difficult for investors to stay the course during volatile markets. This is where our emotional behaviors, such as loss avoidance, confirmation bias, herding, and availability bias, interfere with our decision-making. Such is why we also engage in various actions to mitigate risk and reduce volatility.

A good example of this was in a post on January 7th entitled "Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2025."

In that article, we explained why we expected increased market volatility and lower returns this year. Even though we are long-term fundamental investors, we suggested taking specific actions more often associated with market speculators. To wit:

"While 2025 presents its share of challenges, the solution is not to abandon the market altogether. Instead, investors can take practical steps to navigate these uncertainties. None of this means the next “bear market” is lurking. The data does suggest that being overly aggressive, taking excess risk, and increasing leverage may not have the desired outcome. Since exceedingly bullish markets are a function of psychology, they can last longer and go further than logic predicts. The requirement to “end” such a phase is an exogenous event that changes psychology from bullish to bearish. Such is when the stampede for the exits occurs, and prices can decline very quickly. As such, investors need guidelines to participate in the market advance. But, of course, the hard part is keeping those gains when corrections inevitably occur. This is our approach as portfolio managers for our clients."

1. Tighten up stop-loss levels to current support levels for each position. (Provides identifiable exit points when the market reverses.)
2. Hedge portfolios against significant market declines. (Non-correlated assets, short-market positions, index put options)
3. Take profits in positions that have been big winners. (Rebalancing overbought or extended positions to capture gains but continuing to participate in the advance).
4. Sell laggards and losers. (If something isn’t working in a market melt-up, it most likely won’t work during a broad decline. It is better to eliminate the risk early.)
5. Raise cash and rebalance portfolios to target weightings. (Rebalancing risk regularly keeps hidden risks somewhat mitigated.)

"Notice, nothing in there says, 'Sell everything and go to cash.'"

Those actions of reducing risk, rebalancing portfolios, and taking profits are things that speculators should do to mitigate risk. However, many individuals don't understand the difference between being an investor and a speculator. Let me explain:

When markets rise sharply, individuals invest capital in them without understanding the underlying dynamics or fundamentals. They buy an asset because it is going up. The more the number goes up, the more they buy of it. However, when the price eventually falls, they fail to take action and get trapped within their own psychological biases. At this point, they are generally "investors" in that asset and "hope" that someday it will get back to even.

This same cycle has repeated throughout history, whether in stocks, bonds, gold, or bitcoin. However, investing, ultimately, is about managing the risks, which will substantially reduce your ability to "stay in the game long enough" to "win." Robert Hagstrom, CFA, penned a piece discussing the differences between being an investor and a speculator:

"Philip Carret, who wrote The Art of Speculation (1930), believed “motive” was the test for determining the difference between investment and speculation. Carret connected the investor to the economics of the business and the speculator to price. 'Speculation,' wrote Carret, 'may be defined as the purchase or sale of securities or commodities in expectation of profiting by fluctuations in their prices.'”

Chasing markets is the purest form of speculation. It is simply a bet on prices going higher rather than determining if the price being paid for those assets is selling at a discount to fair value. When prices are NOT selling at a discount, investors devise various rationalizations about why this time is different.

When you look at your portfolio today and assess its risk, are you an investor or a speculator? But more critically, whether you currently own stocks, bonds, gold, or bitcoin, are you a "speculator calling yourself an investor" and coming up with rationalizations to support your view?

To help you in your quest to be a better long-term investor, here are 10 investing guidelines from legendary investors.

10-Investing Guidelines From Legendary Investors

1) Jeffrey Gundlach, DoubleLine

“The trick is to take risks and be paid for taking those risks, but to take a diversified basket of risks in a portfolio.”

This is a common theme throughout this post. Great investors focus on “risk management” because “risk” is not a function of how much money you will make, but how much you will lose when you are wrong. In investing or gambling, you can only play as long as you have capital. If you lose too much capital while taking on excessive risk, you can no longer play the game.

Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. One of the best times to invest is when uncertainty and fear are at their highest.

2) Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates

“The biggest mistake investors make is to believe that what happened in the recent past is likely to persist. They assume that something that was a good investment in the recent past is still a good investment. Typically, high past returns simply imply that an asset has become more expensive and is a poorer, not better, investment.”

Nothing good or bad goes on forever. Investors repeatedly make the mistake of thinking, “This time is different.” The reality is that despite central bank interventions or other artificial inputs, business and economic cycles cannot be repealed. Ultimately, what goes up must and will come down. How many investments in history have never lost value at some point, and in many cases, a lot of value? The answer is none. The same goes for assets with a significant correction, as long as they are fundamentally sound.

3) Seth Klarman, Baupost

“Most investors are primarily oriented toward return, how much they can make and pay little attention to risk, how much they can lose.”

The most significant risk in investing is investor behavior driven by cognitive biases. Greed and fear dominate investors' investment cycles, which ultimately lead to “buying high and selling low.”

4) Jeremy Grantham, GMO

“You don’t get rewarded for taking risk; you get rewarded for buying cheap assets. And if the assets you bought got pushed up in price simply because they were risky, then you are not going to be rewarded for taking a risk; you are going to be punished for it.”

Successful investors avoid “risk” at all costs, even if it means underperforming in the short term. The reason is that while the media and Wall Street have you focused on chasing market returns in the short term, ultimately, the excess “risk” built into your portfolio will lead to extremely poor long-term returns. Like Wile E. Coyote, chasing higher financial markets will eventually lead you over the cliff.

5) Jesse Livermore, Speculator

“The speculator’s deadly enemies are: ignorance, greed, fear and hope. All the statute books in the world and all the rule books on all the Exchanges of the earth cannot eliminate these from the human animal….”

Allowing emotions to rule your investment strategy is, and always has been, a recipe for disaster. All great investors follow a strict discipline, strategy, and risk management diet. Emotional mistakes show up in the returns of individuals' portfolios over time. (Source: Dalbar)

6) Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital Management

“Rule No. 1: Most things will prove to be cyclical.

Rule No. 2: Some of the greatest opportunities for gain and loss come when other people forget Rule No. 1.”

As with Ray Dalio, realizing nothing lasts forever is critical to long-term investing. To “buy low,” one must first " sell high.” Understanding that all things are cyclical suggests that investments become more prone to declines after long price increases.

7) James Montier, GMO

“There is a simple, although not easy alternative [to forecasting]… Buy when an asset is cheap, and sell when an asset gets expensive…Valuation is the primary determinant of long-term returns, and the closest thing we have to a law of gravity in finance.”

“Cheap” is when an asset sells for less than its intrinsic value. “Cheap” is not a low price per share. When a stock has a very low price, it is usually priced there for a reason. However, a very high-priced stock CAN be cheap. Price per share is only part of the valuation determination, not the measure of value itself.

8) George Soros, Soros Capital Management

“It’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important, but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.”

Back to risk management: Being right and making money is great when markets are rising. However, rising markets tend to mask investment risk, which is quickly revealed during market declines. If you fail to manage the risk in your portfolio and give up all of your previous gains and then some, then you lose the investment game.

9) Jason Zweig, Wall Street Journal

“Regression to the mean is the most powerful law in financial physics: Periods of above-average performance are inevitably followed by below-average returns, and bad times inevitably set the stage for surprisingly good performance.”

The chart below shows the 3-year average of annual inflation-adjusted returns of the S&P 500 from 1900. The power of regression is seen. Historically, when returns exceeded 15%, it was not long before they fell below 0% below the long-term mean, which devastated much of investors’ capital.

10) Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital Management

“The biggest investing errors come not from factors that are informational or analytical, but from those that are psychological.”

As should be obvious, the most significant driver of long-term investment returns is minimizing psychological investment mistakes.

As an investor, it is simply your job to step away from your “emotions” and look objectively at the market around you. Is it currently dominated by “greed” or “fear?” Your long-term returns will depend greatly not only on how you answer that question, but also on managing the inherent risk.

What should be obvious is that even great long-term investors adopted some of the traits of speculators to manage risk and volatility. Nothing says you can't do the same.

Being a pure speculator and trying to "day trade" the market by jumping on the latest trends rarely works out well over the long term. However, as you will note, every great investor throughout history has had one core philosophy in common: managing the inherent risk of investing to conserve and preserve investment capital.

“If you run out of chips, you are out of the game.”

The post Speculator Or Investor? 10-Rules From Legendary Investors appeared first on RIA.

The way God set up the Church is one Pope, a lot more Bishops, and exponentially more laymen. This should tell us something about our role in the Church. Clearly, the “institutional” Church is not our role, either to be in it or be overly concerned with it. A few years ago, I wrote a column about three men who became overly concerned about the institutional Church and how their unremitting…

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“And the enemies of the Lord … shall come to nothing and vanish like smoke” (Ps 36:20)

Lying in State, the Body of Francis Appears to be Turning Dark

(image: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images – cropped)

The body of the late Jesuit apostate Jorge Bergoglio (‘Pope Francis’) has been lying in state inside an open coffin in St. Peter’s Basilica since Tuesday, April 22. Tens of thousands of mourners have been paying their respects.

On Friday evening at 8:00 pm local time, the casket will be sealed. The funeral will take place on Saturday at 10:00 am, followed by a procession to the Basilica of St.… READ MORE

The US president’s new merch has reignited third-term rumors

US President Donald Trump has launched a new line of “TRUMP 2028” merchandise, fueling speculation that he aims to seek a third term in office.

The baseball caps, now available through the official Trump campaign store, feature Trump’s name and the year 2028 embroidered in bold block letters, evoking the iconic “Make America Great Again” look. The shop also offers T-shirts in classic red and navy blue featuring the same slogan – along with a promise to “Rewrite the Rules.”

Last month, Trump said he is “not joking” about potentially seeking a third term, claiming that there are “methods” to pursue another run despite the US Constitution’s two-term limit on the presidency.

https://t.co/9ANjNT4QGt pic.twitter.com/6y5nDVVMI1

Asked by NBC News about a hypothetical scenario in which Vice President J.D. Vance could run and then hand over the office to him, Trump replied: “That’s one. But there are others too.”

Although Trump noted that “it is far too early to think” about 2028, the merchandise rollout has reignited speculation about his future plans. The campaign store has warned of up to ten business days of processing time due to “high demand.”

Trump won the 2024 election by a wide margin against Democratic candidate and then-Vice President Kamala Harris, becoming the second president in US history to serve two non-consecutive terms.

The 22nd Amendment states that no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice. However, Trump allies have floated legal arguments challenging or reinterpreting the amendment’s wording, hinting at potential legal or political strategies to pave the way for a third run.

READ MORE: Bookmakers see 20% chance of third Trump term – media

Earlier this year, Republican Congressman Andy Ogles introduced a constitutional amendment that would allow presidents to serve three non-consecutive terms, though it has so far gained little traction. Amendments to the Constitution require approval by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, followed by ratification from three-quarters of the states.

Israel has argued that The Hague has no jurisdiction over its citizens

The International Criminal Court (ICC) Appeals Chamber has instructed a lower panel to reconsider Israel’s objections to the court’s jurisdiction over arrest warrants issued for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, according to a ruling published on Thursday.

Last November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for allegedly committing grave atrocities, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare, during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza launched in response to a deadly 2023 raid by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Israel, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, argued that the court lacks jurisdiction over its citizens. At the time, the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber dismissed Israel’s objections – filed before the warrants were issued – as premature.

However, the Appeals Chamber has now determined that the lower panel “committed an error of law” by failing to adequately address Israel’s arguments, and has remanded the matter for a new ruling.

The directive does not annul the existing warrants but requires the Pre-Trial Chamber to reevaluate the substance of Israel’s jurisdictional objections.

Israeli officials have welcomed the Appeals Chamber’s decision – but criticized it for refusing to suspend the arrest warrants immediately. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar stated on X that the arrest warrants were issued unlawfully and are “null and void.”

“We said it from the start: The International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC) doesn’t have, and never had, jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister and its former Minister of Defense,” Saar wrote.

Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, accused the ICC of acting “as a political tool serving Israel’s enemies.”

“The decision to revisit the question of jurisdiction exposes the lack of legitimacy behind the political arrest warrants,” Danon said, according to a statement from his office. “Israel will continue to defend itself, in coordination with its partners, and will not remain silent in the face of such hypocrisy.”

The ICC Prosecutor’s Office has acknowledged the Appeals Chamber’s ruling and is currently reviewing the decision, although the timeline for the reconsideration has not been specified. The court had also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes, which was withdrawn in February 2025 following confirmation of his death.