A quick period of readjustment over the last six weeks depressed portfolio returns in the second quarter, but we think the markets are now more realistically priced and may be poised to resume their upward momentum later this year. The following chart shows the 3-month, 5-year, and 10-year performance of many DFA funds (representing different asset classes) compared to the […]
Year: 2013
The Art of Letting Go
In many areas of life, intense activity and constant monitoring of results represent the path to success. In investment, that approach gets turned on its head. The Chinese philosophy of Taoism has a word for it: “wuwei.” It literally means “non-doing.” In other words, the busier we are with our long-term investments and the more we tinker, the less likely […]
“You Have to Be in Gold”
“We are living in a world of money printing. … That is why I have to recommend gold again. … Once gold surpasses $1,800 an ounce, it will run to the low-to-mid $2,000s.” Quotation attributed to Felix Zuelauf, Zuelauf Asset Management. “Here’s What’s Cooking for 2013,” Barron’s, January 21, 2013. “Investors can choose between artificially priced financial assets or real assets like […]
Buying and holding still works despite stock market volatility
The perception that day-to-day stock market volatility has increased may convince some investors that they should be trading within their portfolios frequently. Indeed, lots of stock market commentators love to talk about “the action this afternoon” and “what investors should be doing right now.” How about just sitting on their hands? It may come as a surprise but some of […]
Forget economic growth: Stocks compensate for risk
Periodic arguments that long-term stock market returns are a thing of the past have cropped up again, with noted bond investment manager Bill Gross calling the stock market a “Ponzi scheme.” He argues that U.S. stocks returned 6.6 percent per year over inflation during the last century, while gross domestic product, a measure of changes in the country’s production of […]
Expensive Mistakes
There are two ways of learning: You can be taught how to do something correctly, or you can be shown the consequences of doing it wrong. In the world of investment, it’s a lot cheaper to learn from others’ mistakes. A recent edition of a television current affairs program1 detailed how elderly Australians, many of them with only modest nest eggs, […]
Client Letter – Q1 2013
In December 2012, we launched the Sparrow Wealth Management online vault, which provides a secure location for all of your financial, tax, and estate documents. So far, about 60% of our clients have logged into the vault using the username and password that we sent via email. For those of you who haven’t logged in yet, please do so soon! […]
Betting against the House
It’s New Year’s Day 2012. In addition to overdosing on televised college football, you’re spending part of the holiday working on the family finances. Armed with a laptop and various online financial tools, you’re on the hunt for appealing stock market opportunities. To prune the list of candidates to a manageable size, you decide to focus on firms that are […]
Rebalancing: Hard to do but worth it
Much research has supported the benefits of regularly rebalancing a portfolio. It suggests that an investor should start with a target asset allocation and then regularly sell or buy individual holdings in order to keep that allocation steady. For instance, suppose the investor starts with 50 percent in stocks and 50 percent in bonds. A year later the stock market […]
Dollar cost averaging vs. a lump sum: Which creates more wealth?
One of the oldest tricks in the investment book is dollar-cost averaging (DCA). This technique suggests that investors will do well over time by slowly investing fixed sums of money into the markets at regular periods. By doing so they will take advantage of the low buying points while not putting too much money in at any one market top. […]
