Some pension funds for state and local employees have sought higher risk investments in order to boost returns and make up for funding shortfalls. Others have stuck to a traditional diversified stock and bond mix. Guess who has done better? (Here’s a hint: it wasn’t the pension plans that took high risks). Falling tax revenues and rising retirement costs have […]
Month: June 2012
Gold disappoints over the long-term
Gold has been on a tear since 2000, but its long-term record of growth for individual investors is pretty poor. From the end of 1999 through 2011, gold beat most major equity asset classes, gaining an average of 12.3 percent per year, says Dimensional Fund Advisors, a large California-based investment firm. But the record since 1975, when individual U.S. investors […]
Scary predictions by perma-bears end up being hot air
Volatilestock markets generate a peculiar type of celebrity known as the “perma-bear.” This is the highly negative forecaster who gets credited with calling a bear market before it starts. What you usually don’t get told is that he or she has been calling for a bear market for years without success. When their big chance finally comes, perma-bears milk it […]
The Death of Equities, Revisited
A recent article appearing in the Financial Times caught our eye—or perhaps we should say ear. At first glance it was unremarkable—just one among dozens of recent think pieces suggesting that investors were losing interest in stocks as markets around the world continued to stagnate. But the tone of the article sounded remarkably familiar. We dug out our copy of the “Death […]
