Money doesn't actually talk. We do.

Weekwrap: What Glossy Mags Can, Can’t Teach You About Investing

A recent issue of Money Magazine takes apart the portfolios of the leading presidential candidates and their spouses and discovers that they make the same investing mistakes that everyone else does.

Hillary Clinton’s trying to beat the market with a collection of individual stocks, while John McCain’s wife is in pricey J.P. Morgan mutual funds. Meanwhile, Giuliani, Edwards and Romney all have money in private equity, hedge funds or consulting firms with investments or clients that have or could cause them political trouble.

Barack Obama gets our endorsement on the basis of he and his wife’s holdings in two low-fee mutual funds at Vanguard, including a voter-friendly socially-responsible index fund.

Great story idea. Wish we’d thought of it. Oh wait, we did think of it! Our Sam Grobart dreamed it up right before he left the magazine to join FiLife.

Money’s sister publication Fortune (where I spent several happy years as a cub reporter) is out with its annual investor’s guide. The editor’s note crows about the magazine’s stock picks having kicked “some serious market” of late, and one cover line promises to tell you “What to Buy Now!”

This sort of stuff is best ingested along side Michael Lewis’s spectacular piece in Portfolio called “The Evolution of an Investor.” It traces the career arc of one Blaine Lourd, a one-time stockbroker who, over time, slowly realized that neither he nor anyone else had any business trying to figure out What to Buy Now.

Instead, he puts his clients mostly in index funds or similar vehicles. If you still think you’re too smart to need to do that, you simply have to read this story.

– Ron Lieber