SKARBECK: Short-term sizzle can’t beat consistency
To achieve outsized returns, whether in mutual funds or individual stocks, investors must avoid the hype and reliance on past outperformance.
To achieve outsized returns, whether in mutual funds or individual stocks, investors must avoid the hype and reliance on past outperformance.
While the stock market is not as easy to follow as watching a calendar, it leaves evidence as to what it is going to do next,
much like falling leaves warn you about the coming of winter.
Most investors have heard the cautionary statement “past
performance is not indicative of future results.” This oft-repeated caveat reveals its truth time and again in the investment
industry.
Another fact emerged during May. People became way too bearish. Surveys and market action both suggested a growing fear that
became almost everyone’s opinion.
for decades, politicians have regularly boosted public pension benefits to score election gains, while neglecting the long-term costs to municipal budgets. Now the bills are coming due.
Here are the facts. Summer doesn’t turn into winter without going through fall. The same is true with the transition between
bull and bear markets.
One crisis that continues to simmer under the public radar is the endless taxpayer support needed to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
U.S. markets look like they have at least one more rally on the way at some point in the next few months.
Is investing becoming a technology-rigged game for computerized gamblers who rent stocks for seconds or minutes and whose objective is to repeatedly skim small profits?
That oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a nasty event that truly deserves all of our attention.
I want to see the hole capped quickly so the environment doesn’t get beat up any more than it already has, but I have
a feeling the economic and political ramifications will be felt for years to come.
As much as I disagree with corporate welfare and insider back-room dealings, the fact is that Goldman Sachs is one of the most powerful institutions in the world.
Grace held her investment through many ups and downs in the stock market. But most important to her was that Abbott as a
business continued to thrive, despite the swings in its stock price.
When we left, we were trying to imagine a few of the many obstacles Grace might have encountered as her initial investment grew into $7 million over 74 years.
Until a bull market reaches its last stages (the final three to 12 months), there is a general lack of belief that the market
can go higher.
Back in 1935, she invested $180 in Abbott Laboratories stock and never sold it. This one decision became the entire investment
career of Grace Groner.
I normally don’t expect complete child-like behavior from heads of state, but every political leader in Europe has been
acting like a little kid trying to run away from the broken window.
At the very least, regulators need to get control of derivative trading—transactions need to be more transparent and carried
out on an exchange.
Simon is at a crossroads where many other CEOs have found themselves, with most of them getting caught up in the circus, only to find destruction in their wake.
Fears that Greece may default on its government debt have kept global markets on edge.
Over the last 100-plus years, bull and bear markets in the United States have broken down into different stages.