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Make Positive Changes to Increase Happiness

Date09 Jun 2014

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Dan Solin is a New York Times best-selling author of the Smartest series of books. The following excerpt from his latest book, The Smartest Sales Book You’ll Ever Read, shows how you have the power to increase your level of happiness. Do you really have the power to increase your happiness? Experts say yes. Sonja...

Is it OK to keep your assets with one fund family?

Date27 May 2014

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One of the more frequently asked questions I get is about the need to diversify across mutual fund or exchange-traded fund providers: Is there risk in having all your eggs in one fund family’s basket? This question became even more prevalent after the Bernie Madoff fraud was exposed. We’ll begin to address this issue by...

How the mutual fund graveyard can hurt investors

Date27 May 2014

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The tendency for mutual fund companies to drop poorly performing funds when calculating historical return data is a major problem for unsuspecting investors, and it’s known as survivorship bias. An investor selecting mutual funds today is choosing from a list that excludes the losers that have been either closed or merged out of existence so...

Should People Listen To John Hussman’s Forecasts?

Date27 May 2014

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In my book, Think, Act, and Invest Like Warren Buffett, I noted that the Oracle of Omaha advised investors: “We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good. Even now, Charlie (Munger) and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up...

Should You Include International Bonds In Your Portfolio? – Part I

Date27 May 2014

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Today begins a two-part series on international bonds and whether or not they belong in your portfolio. Broad diversification of risk is one of the prudent rules of investing – since it’s the only free lunch in investing, you might as well eat as much of it as you can. For equity investors, an important...

Should You Include International Bonds In Your Portfolio? – Part II

Date27 May 2014

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Today we continue our discussion on international bonds. We’ll begin with a Vanguard study. Vanguard reached the same conclusions we discussed in yesterday’s post in their February 2014 research paper “Global fixed income: Considerations for U.S. Investors.” The paper states: For the average investor seeking to further mitigate volatility in a diversified portfolio, foreign bonds can play...

Is The Stock Market ‘Overgrazed’?

Date27 May 2014

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There’s an interesting new paper by Claude Erb, “Has the Stock Market Been Overgrazed?” He begins with noting that over time (since the 1920s), the beta, size and value premiums have all declined. He then asks: “What if too many investors are demanding too much from a possibly limited supply of opportunities?” Said another way,...

Rethinking Dividend Strategies

Date27 May 2014

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During bear markets, the dividends thrown off by companies provide the cash flow required, while a total-return approach requires one to sell shares to provide the cash flow—a clear advantage of dividend-focused strategies that those who favor them are quick to point out. This blog addresses that issue specifically. We’ll begin our discussion by pointing...

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