SKARBECK: Who could have predicted last year’s mighty market?
It is doubtful that any analyst predicted the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury bond would fall dramatically from 3.03 percent to 2.17 percent.
It is doubtful that any analyst predicted the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury bond would fall dramatically from 3.03 percent to 2.17 percent.
if you can get comfortable with uncertainty; adopt a long-term perspective; and follow a disciplined, patient and unemotional investment approach, you’ll be miles ahead of most investors.
The ongoing debate between “active” portfolio management and “passive” management is again a hot topic as 2014 comes to a close.
DonorsChoose enables public schoolteachers to post classroom project requests and donors to pick the projects they want to support.
While recent years have been a boon to upper-income groups, evidenced by sales of luxury goods and rising stock prices, the economy now seems poised to provide a boost to the broader population.
This holiday season, skip buying the got-to-have whatever and consider establishing or making a gift to a young person’s 529 plan account. Not only is it a gift that will last a lifetime, but if you’re an Indiana resident, the state will pick up 20 percent of the cost.
Steadfast investors are seeing new highs as the market indexes are now some 20 percent above the high reached in 2007 before the credit crisis.
U.S. mutual funds are required to “distribute” realized capital gains and income to shareholders at least annually, making this a tricky time of year for investors to buy shares in taxable accounts.
Companies with two or more distinct businesses operating under their umbrella will sometimes conclude that spinning off a subsidiary into a separate company is beneficial to all stakeholders.
While the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index reached record highs on the last day of October, most active stock managers have struggled in 2014. One of the primary difficulties has been the wide divergence in performance between the largest-capitalization and smaller-capitalization stocks.
The latest trend enabled by computers is “robo-advisers.” These computer-driven financial advisers are springing up to offer low-cost, automated portfolio management.
I’ve written a number of columns with advice for when the talking heads are screaming about the coming apocalypse, so I thought it might be useful to review some of those concepts.
Chalk this up as one for “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” The employees of some well-known financial firms have sued their employers for placing their own company’s proprietary mutual funds in their 401(k) plans.
California Public Employees’ Retirement System is dumping its entire hedge fund program. The reason, according to Ted Eliopoulos, the chief investment officer, is “their complexity, cost and lack of ability to scale to CalPERS size.“
Recently, financial academics, like Rob Arnott of Research Affiliates, have published white papers supporting a different type of index investing. They call their creation “smart beta.
Instead of assembling a pretend roster for your fantasy football league, how would you like to actually own a piece of Andrew Luck or your favorite player?
While the goal of many investors is to “beat the market,” it is a well-known fact that most investors (including professionals), underperform the market over the long run. Hence, the argument to buy index funds. Investors who invest in index funds accept the aggregate ups and downs (volatility) of the broad stock market.
A college education is one of life’s costliest investments, so you want to maximize your return on that investment.
The Securities and Exchange Commission last month approved new rules for money market funds, which require institutional “prime” money funds and municipal funds to have a floating net asset value, or NAV.
Accurate information about low-priced stocks issued by the smallest of companies can be difficult to find. This makes it easy for fraudsters to spread false information. It’s truly the Wild West of speculation.