Before Setting New Goals, Evaluate the Previous Ones
Over the next few weeks, you’ll hear a lot about setting financial and other goals. I doubt I’ll be the first (or the last) to ask what goals you have in mind for 2015. Obviously, setting goals and wanting to...
Investing Headlines: The Good, Bad and Ugly
You can learn a lot if you read the financial headlines with the right perspective. It’s unfortunate that most provide misinformation designed to encourage trading, increase anxiety and otherwise foster bad investing behavior. There are some notable exceptions, but finding...
Try This Revolutionary Approach to Investing
As an investor, you are probably concerned about “uncertainty” in the market. Sometimes it may feel like you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. It probably doesn’t help that the financial media appears so vocally divided between...
How To Think About Bear Markets
Until quite recently, 2014 had been a very quiet and calm year for the stock market. With the exception of a few days in early February, the VIX had never spent any time above 20. As August ended, it stood...
Hedge Funds Rip Off Investors
As we have discussed many times, the evidence demonstrates that hedge funds have consistently failed to deliver on their promise of alpha. There is an overwhelming body of research indicating that hedge funds must be ego-driven investments, because there can...
A Surefire Way to Make Money in 2015
I have a surefire way for you to make money in 2015. It’s disarmingly simple, and I’m not even going to keep you waiting. Here’s what I want you to do: Get into the business of managing other people’s money....
Tax Mgmt Year Round Job
I was asked recently about a situation in which an investor had to sell stocks from his taxable account in order to meet a cash flow need; in this case, a down payment on a home. He pointed out the...
Learn From This New Low in Financial News
I woke up on Dec. 14 to this stunning headline in the New York Post: “High school student scores $72M playing the stock market.” It was a sensational story. The story was sourced to an original report in New York...
Don’t Repeat the Same Investing Mistakes Next Year
It was a great year for stock market returns. According to data from Morningstar, as of Dec. 24 stocks representing the U.S. market returned 13.95 percent. Morningstar’s intermediate core bond index returned 5.16 percent over the same period. Even with...
