Employees who contribute to their 401k and other retirement plans are missing the boat when it comes to worldwide investment diversification, says OppenheimerFunds. Its recent survey of 1,000 investors found a distinct “home market” bias among employees investing for retirement. It says employees routinely misunderstood the risks and rewards of investing overseas in international stocks and bonds. Many thought the […]
Year: 2012
Passive investors beat active managers in ten-year scorecard
Indexed and passive investing have gotten a bad rap from active managers out to protect their turf and the high fees they earn from buying and selling securities. Passive managers buy a portfolio that matches a market index or that covers an entire asset class. Plenty of academic research suggests that they will do better than the average active investor […]
Client Letter – Q1 2012
During the past quarter, U.S. and international stocks performed exceptionally well, with international and emerging markets doing the best (as they have during the last ten years). Ironically, U.S. stocks have outperformed international stocks during the last one year and five year periods. The following chart shows the 3-month, 5-year, and 10-year performance of many DFA funds (representing different asset […]
Client Letter – Q4 2011
Any investor should be willing to admit 2011 was a pretty crazy year for the markets. We were churned through the year by a weather and nuclear disaster in Japan, a deadlock over finances in Congress that led to a downgrade of U.S. debt, and a major crisis in Europe that threatened to blow apart the European Union and end […]