What is the Role of Bonds in Your Portfolio?
A lot of the time, investors view each of their investments in isolation. They focus on how this fund or that fund did. But this is a fundamentally wrong headed approach. Just like your investment portfolio only really matters – and can only be evaluated – in the context of your overall retirement plan, you […]
What is the Efficient Market Hypothesis? And What Does it Mean for You?
Navigating the financial markets can often feel like you’re in a labyrinth, with news outlets, analysts, and every ‘guru’ on the internet vying for your attention, each one painting a picture of the market landscape teeming with endless opportunities for extraordinary gains (or horrific losses). But there’s an easy way for investors (whether you’re focused […]
Choosing Between Individual Bonds and Bond Funds in Your Investment Portfolio
When investors are looking at their bonds, one of the most common questions is whether they should use individual bonds or bond funds (either in the form of mutual funds or ETFs) in their investment portfolio. Interest rates have come up over the past few years, so the yields on bonds have also come up. […]
Home Sweet Home Bias: Overweighting US Stocks in Your Portfolio
Investing is deceptively simple. Until it’s not. As investors, we want to start with the market portfolio—that is, by definition, the most efficient portfolio. But we’ll also want to customize our investments to address our specific situation. For instance, the global bond market is substantially bigger than the global stock market, but most retirement-focused investors’ […]
Do Stocks Get Safer The Longer You Own Them?
There are a lot of cliches in retirement planning. And a lot of them are cliches for a good reason – they’re good advice. But not always, and more than a few of them are right for the wrong reasons.
One of those cliches is that with investing you need to focus on the long term to reduce the risks from investing. It is absolutely true that investing is a long-term activity, but is that second part true? Do stocks (and other types of investments) get safer the longer you hold onto them?
How to Generate Inflation Adjusted Income in Retirement
Inflation is a fact of life. It’s also not so great for retirees. In fact, it’s one of the biggest risks that retirees face. By constantly eating away at the value of our savings and income, inflation will slowly reduce our purchasing power in retirement – if we don’t do anything about it.
You Can’t Time the Markets
The appeal of market timing is obvious. Who wouldn’t want to get in and out of the market at the best time every time? We’ve talked a lot about market timing in the past – timing risk premiums, trying to time the markets on a daily basis, and the importance of staying disciplined even when it seems obvious the markets are going to go down.
Why Can’t ‘Winning’ Active Managers Keep on Winning?
The numbers show that active management simply doesn’t work. There are several arguments against active fund managers, but one of the most damning is that winners don’t seem to repeat.
Are Republicans or Democrats Better for the Stock Market?
Every four years we talk about how this year’s Presidential election is the most important ever. Along the way, people make a whole host of sweeping statements about how picking their team will lead to all of the good things happening, but picking the other team will lead to all of the bad things happening […]
What Is Style Drift and Can It Be Avoided?
All too often, the funds you use end up sabotaging your asset allocation. What if the funds you select don’t do what you think they will? When you use actively managed funds, you have to watch out for something called “style drift” – when a fund’s style (what the fund actually owns) moves over time.
