Studies show fund trading costs higher than many disclosed costs
"Trading costs for mutual funds -- largely hidden from investors -- average around 1.5 percent a year, higher than many disclosed expenses, two new studies found."
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
John Bogle Says Stocks Are 10 Years Away From Record
"We're in a system where in the financial markets speculation is the star and investing is playing a supporting role," Bogle said. "We need to get back to a system where long-term investing is the star and short-term speculation plays the supporting role."
Monday, May 25, 2009
Forget the analysis, just buy everything
"Ideally, you would have poured money into these funds when markets hit a multi-year low on March 9, but investor timing is notoriously horrible, Rothery said, noting that investors lose between three and five percentage points or more a year from trying to time the market.
They would have been better off, if they're index-oriented, to just stick with an index and go to sleep."
Friday, May 22, 2009
Nobody cares about you more than you.
"Investing isn't speculating (gambling). Investing shouldn't be complicated. Investing doesn't need to be expensive. More importantly, investing should leave you richer, not "broker" (double entendre intended)."
Nobody cares about you more than you
Nobody cares about you more than you
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Obama's Favorite Mutual Fund
So how does our President invest? Looks like he believes in low cost, simple investing. He owns only one equity mutual fund - the Vanguard FTSE Social Index fund. But he's getting killed on his 529 college saving plan - he's being charged a 3.5% upfront sales load and annual expense ratios of around 1.3%. Not good!
Obama's Favorite Mutual Fund
Obama's Favorite Mutual Fund
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
It Takes Two
By all the chatter you hear on TV, on the Web, and in magazines, you'd think investing is akin to rocket science. Well it's not. It can be simple, as described in an article on ABC News today - Survive the Market: Your Two-Fund Solution. Own a stock index fund and a bond index fund and as your investing time horizon changes, adjust your asset allocation accordingly. Simple enough.
Well, actually too simple for the financial industry. Because if that's all you did you wouldn't need finance news and magazines and advisors - and they would all be out of business. So they need you to think it is much more complex and that you need them to help you understand all this stuff. Well, you don't.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Fair Weather Risk Taking
An article in today's Boston Globe about financial adviser Nan Sabel opens with "Today, conversations that used to center on maximizing gains are now about minimizing losses". Something about that statement struck me as wrong. Investing is all about balancing gains with losses. It's about understanding how much risk you're willing to take on to try to reach for extra performance. The trouble is, when times are good, risk seems unreal. It's only when the market goes south do people understand what risk is.
©2009