On today's version of my blog post, What Ted's Thinking, I share a bunch of things on my mind that fall under the title, I don't know.

I ask every guest on the podcast, what's your biggest investment pet peeve?

Mine is investors to express absolutes in a world of probabilities.

The late Peter Bernstein defined risk as,

you don't know what will happen, adding, even when you think you do.

There's a fine line that investors walk between conviction and humility,

but those who believe they know the future without a shadow

of a doubt fall a notch in my estimation. At the end of my last blog, playing for tomorrow,

I shared a series of opportunities and risks that I believe have a greater than 50% chance

of occurring. But the truth is, I don't know what the future holds. Of course I don't. It sounds so obvious

when I say it that way. Yet every day we see market participants behaving as if they do. It's what

forms bubbles in markets and what makes for great television on CNBC. I thought about the important

investment phrase, I don't know, when reading a Bain and

company study on the private wealth market. Matt Brown from Case shared mind-blowing data

about the tidal wave of capital coming to alternatives from the channel on the podcast last

year. However, when Bain asked wealth managers for the names of firms that offer alternative

investments, here's what they found. Bain asked wealth managers for the names of firms that offer alternative investments,

here's what they found.

Bain presented a word cloud of money manager names in answer to the question.

I don't know is by far the most frequently mentioned.

Hop on the blog page at our website to see the image from the study.

I would have presumed that Blackstone, Ares,

...