Category Index Funds
Buy Facebook? You may already have!
When Facebook (FB) went public, several folks immediately asked if they should buy it. My response was, uniformly, “no”. It was not that I thought FaceBook was overvalued (I did), not that I thought the price was going to drop soon (I did – IPOs frequently go down in the short term, and a spectacularly […]
Malkiel: Buy Stocks, not Bonds
Burton Malkiel has been speaking up a lot lately, and with much the same message – repeated several times over the last few months (at least since an op-ed back in April). While hitting on some of the same themes he’s hit on for 40 years (index funds, low costs, broad diversification, don’t time the […]
Ten most common mistakes
Totally worth reading. I’d have said exactly these same things and I tell them to clients all the time. So good I’m thinking of mailing this link in my next On The Spot email. http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/07/investors-10-most-common-mistakes/ A really great “top 10” list by Barry Ritholtz: Investors’ 10 most common mistakes I seriously recommend reading the whole […]
Top 10 non-leveraged ETFs over the last year
I saw an article on a financial planning site pointing to the fact that 8 of the top 10 performing ETFs in 2011 were US Government Bond funds. So I just did a quick double check via Morningstar’s ETF screener, though the screener doesn’t let me pick a specific year – it lets me do […]
WSJ/Burton Malkiel: Where to Put Your Money in 2012
WSJ/Burton Malkiek: Where to Put Your Money in 2012
Another excellent op-ed piece by Burton Malkiel, author of the classic “A Random Walk Down Wall Street”.
Malkiel makes the following points (summarized – but you should really read the article):
- Bonds, especially US and Europe, are not positioned to do very well in the future
- Stocks, especially the US and Emerging Markets are
- Emerging Markets, in general but especially Brazil and China and even India look good (natural resources, demographics, etc)
- Single-family houses in the US are less expensive and with ultra-low mortgage rates (see “Bonds” above — a mortgage is the opposite side of buying a bond – it’s borrowing rather than lending!) look good. (“Housing affordability has never been better.” Though, of course, that’s contingent on good credit and probably a job.)
- Costs matter – this was the final paragraph and it’s always worth repeating: “Control the thing you can control — minimize investment costs. That is especially important in a low-return environment. Make low-cost index mutual funds or ETFs the core of your portfolio and ensure that any actively-managed investment funds you purchase are low-expense as well.”
Hardly a “lost decade”
We recently heard from a person who has some complaints about the last decade’s performance of his 401(k). He said he’d been putting money in since the beginning of 2000, regularly, and after all this time, the portfolio in his 401(k) is worth a little bit less than the sum of all the money he’d […]
Rick Ferri says “Mutual Fund investors should Occupy Boston”
http://www.rickferri.com/blog/investments/fund-investors-should-lead-%e2%80%9coccupy-boston%e2%80%9d/ Following all the Occupy This and That out there (WallSt, mainly, but there are satellite protests), Rick makes some great points. They’re the same ones he makes on a regular basis, but it’s still nice to see them tied down so cleanly. Summary – the mutual fund industry has been raking in huge amounts […]
WSJ: John Bogle – How the Index Fund Was Born
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904583204576544681577401622.html A nice op-ed note from Bogle about how the first index fund was started, and about his relationship with the late Paul Samuelson.
Swedroe on GNMAs for your Bond Allocation
Always worth reading, here’s Swedroe’s recent piece about whether or not to use GNMA (mortgage-backed securities) as your bond allocation: http://moneywatch.bnet.com/investing/blog/wise-investing/gnmas-you-can-do-better/2887/ Some things he notes: A 60/40 portfolio with intermediate treasuries has had a higher return and lower volatility than a similar portfolio with GNMAs GNMAs have a higher correlation with equities (which explains a […]
Felix Salmon responds to Swensen’s anti-mutual-fund piece
Felix Salmon, a widely published financial journalist, responds to Swensen’s article about how much of the mutual fund industry is ripping off investors. In particular, he takes issue with Swensen’s suggestion that the SEC should be somehow pushing folks to buy index funds. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/19/why-the-sec-shouldnt-push-index-funds/ Salmon grudgingly seems to agree that *within an asset class* it […]
Meyers Wealth Management 