Despite living in an electronic age, you may feel as though you’re drowning in paper: bills, monthly statements, insurance claims, the works. Fortunately it doesn’t have to be that way. Take these steps to protect your electronic records, says Chris Jones, president of Sparrow Wealth Management, in Las Vegas. Read the Full Article
The global fashion industry is fickle by nature, pushing and then pulling trends to keep hapless consumers forever turning over their wardrobes. Much of the financial services industry works the same way. Fashion designers, manufacturers, and media operate by telling consumers what’s in vogue this year, thus artificially creating demand where none previously existed. What turns up in the boutiques […]
As the holidays arrive, there are many constants in life to be thankful for: family, friends, and experiences, just to name a few. As many of us gather around the dinner table, discussions of internet hackers, early picks to win the Super Bowl, and stories of the past are bound to be debated. Perhaps the one thing that all of […]
Research released by Dalbar presents a grim evaluation of individual investors. The study reveals that over the 20 year period from 1982-2012, the average equity fund investor has earned an annualized return of 4.25%, while the S&P 500 has an annualized 8.22% return. This begs the question: Why is the individual investor losing nearly 4% annually? Behavioral finance offers some […]
Volatility is back. Just as many people were starting to think markets only ever move in one direction, the pendulum has swung the other way. Anxiety is a completely natural response to these events. Acting on those emotions, though, can end up doing us more harm than good. There are a number of tidy-sounding theories about why markets have become […]
What can’t Google do? Free email, customized searches, maps, apps, browsers, video—the list goes on. Now researchers claim to have found a link between Google searches and future stock market movements. Researchers at Warwick Business School in the UK and Boston University in the US say they have developed a method that identifies historical links between searches related to business and politics […]
The third quarter of 2014 was a tale of two markets—large U.S. stocks and everything else. A handful of big stocks pushed up the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index by about 1 percent over the late summer and early fall. Meanwhile, just about every other asset class that we invest in declined, from small U.S. stocks to real estate and […]
In “Close Encounters with the Market Timers,” I discussed why having your portfolio managed actively may have serious consequences on your returns in the long run. As mentioned previously, actively managed funds generally fail to beat their target benchmarks over long periods of time. There are many reasons for this, but the principal reasons are high fees and costs. These […]
Market expectations about interest rates change because of news. This makes it very difficult to build a coherent investment strategy around a forecast. In a recent article, Bloomberg News noted that the rally in the US Treasury market in 2014 was stronger than every economist surveyed by its journalists had predicted.1 US 10-year yields were around 2.3% at the end […]
A few weeks ago Chris recommended that I read a new book, “Social Security Strategies”, to better understand some of the strategies that clients can use to get the most out of Social Security over their lifetimes. As the name implies, the authors lay out different strategies on when to begin Social Security benefits based on profiles of an individual […]
