Money Talks | Business and finance

How to invest if you want to be cheerful

Our podcast on markets, the economy and business. This week, money may not buy you happiness but where you put it can help

More than half a century ago, the Nobel-prizewinning economist Robert Merton came up with a formula for happiness. The Merton share is a rule of thumb for determining an individual’s ideal portfolio split between “risky” but lucrative assets and “safe” ones. His principles are almost universally accepted by academics as the “correct” approach to long-term investment. So why don’t more people follow his advice?

Hosts: Ethan Wu and Mike Bird. Guests: The Economist’s Josh Roberts; Victor Haghani, founder of Elm Wealth; and John Cochrane, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

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