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 […]
Investments
The price of active investing: Would you believe $100 billion?
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 […]
How heavily should a retiree invest in the stock market?
Common sense seems to tell those who are in or approaching retirement that they should cut back on their investment risk. After all, they will have to rely on it for income and feel they can’t afford to lose it. One rule of thumb says that you should subtract your age from 100 and the remainder is the percentage that […]
Want to be a better investor? Start learning from your mistakes
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 […]
Turnabout for Cramer: Use index funds
This may be one of the strangest investment stories of the year: Jim Cramer, the cable television madman who rants about buying stocks, now says most investors should use index funds. Wait a minute, this isn’t the same Jim Cramer who ran a hedge fund and whose Mad Money show on CNBC nightly touts individual stock plays, is it? You […]
Have the bear market jitters? Here is how to survive and thrive
Recession fears, rising unemployment, and stock markets plunging worldwide: What’s a poor investor to do? Not only are the headlines scary and unsettling but so are the monthly statements from your broker showing a drop in your portfolio value. It can be very hard to maintain your focus and long-term commitment to the stock market when investors all about you […]
The stock market often moves two steps forward, one step back
One of the hardest things to accept about the stock market is its volatility: prices rise and fall day to day, month to month, and year to year. One month an investor’s account has grown to a certain level, and the next month it has fallen back a few percent from that high, making the investor feel like he has […]
Employees with 401k accounts flee from stocks in August
Some workers who invest in stocks through their employers’ 401k plans proved to be fickle investors this summer. In August—after sharp stock market declines in July—a near record amount of 401k money was yanked from the stock market, says Hewitt Associates LLC, a human resources consulting firm. Hewitt’s index of 401k investments showed that plan participants shifted $765 million from […]
Think you need a hedge fund for excitement? Better think again
For the last few years there has been a steady drumbeat out of Wall Street touting the advantages of “alternative” investments for well-to-do investors. The alternative crowd argues that plain old stocks and bonds and mutual funds are no longer good enough for sophisticated investors. Instead, they need a dose of hedge funds, private equity investments, and venture capital deals […]
Most retirees should have more money in stocks than they think
It is common for those planning for retirement to feel that they should make their investment portfolios more conservative once they leave the workforce. After all, they have to live off their nest eggs for the rest of their lives and can’t afford to lose money in a declining stock market. However, new studies continue to show that most retirees […]