Investments

Were you able to predict the global bear market that sucked trillions of dollars out of investors’ pockets in late 2008? In retrospect, it looks like it should have been easy to predict—after all, the subprime mortgage crisis had gone on for a year before stocks started crashing in October 2008. It seems obvious that the economy was collapsing and that […]

Most investors could dramatically improve their returns by eliminating five common mistakes from their portfolio management toolboxes. One of these common mistakes is so deadly it could wipe you out, while the others can cost you big time. The most dangerous mistake you can make is betting everything on one investment. This is akin to putting all of your chips […]

Doesn’t it seem reasonable that when the stock market is dropping month after month you should get out, avoid more losses, and wait for the upturn? Unfortunately, this is just what many investors do. Once they are out of the market, they often don’t begin investing until well after a recovery has occurred and it looks very apparent that the […]

The U.S. stock market enjoyed a major bull run in the second half of the 1990s, with the S&P 500 Index climbing an average of almost 29 percent per year between 1995 and 1999.  However, it appears that the average investor did not reap much of that reward, says John Bogle, former chairman of the Vanguard Group, a major mutual fund company. […]

There are nearly 70 stock markets offering their wares to investors around the globe.  Sexy, up-and-coming markets like China beckon, while exotic markets like Turkey’s and Russia’s are growing fast. How should an investor allocate his limited investment dollar?  Probably the best method involves following the actual capitalization of the world’s markets, that is, investing the most in the biggest markets and […]

Foreign stock markets were on fire last year, handily beating the U.S. market and drawing the attention of domestic investors. The Brazilian stock market gained 44%, Germany 22%, China 96%, and India47%. The U.S. market, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, gained just 3.5%. And that was not an isolated, one-year event: foreign stocks on average have […]

American mutual fund investors are spending a lot of money in a vain quest to beat the market, says famed finance professor Kenneth R. French of Dartmouth. French has made public preliminary results from his detailed study of the costs investors pay to own actively-managed funds whose goals are to beat the U.S. stock market. The estimated annual cost so […]

Remember when a special teacher in your life told you it was good to make mistakes as long as you could learn from them? It is probably one of the most important maxims for investors—and probably one of the most ignored. The evidence that investors don’t learn from mistakes is widespread. Every few years a new mania takes hold and […]