Allocation
The Yield Curve is Inverted. Don’t Panic.
Wednesday was another “interesting” day in the markets. The S&P 500 Index was down almost 3% on the day – and follows on the heels of last Monday, where the market was also down nearly 3%. It’s been an eventful week and a half. Rather than dissect what’s caused these drops (and annoy one half…
Read MoreCan TIPS Help You?
Inflation is one of the most pernicious risks facing retirees. While there are a lot of ways to manage inflation risk, TIPS, or Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, are one of the few investment options that directly hedge against inflation risk. They aren’t perfect, and there are certainly some things to consider when you use them…
Read MoreShould You Own Bonds in a Rising Rate Environment?
Most people don’t think too much about their bonds. They really are the boring foundation for your portfolio. However, occasionally they spring to the surface, and this is one of those times. Lately, a number of people have been wondering why they should be investing in bonds, since we’re obviously in a period of rising…
Read MoreHow Are You Different From The Average Investor?
Taking distributions from an investment portfolio amplifies the impacts of portfolio volatility, making retirement income planning particularly tricky as distributions tend to be the primary income source for retirees. We can use Monte Carlo simulations to show the increase of money-weighted investment returns in retirement, which has important implications about the choice for a fixed portfolio return assumption.
Read MoreAre Bitcoins a Good Tool For Retirement Investors?
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.
Read MoreHow Can You Prepare for the Next 2008?
Because financial markets are habitually unpredictable in the short run, it’s challenging to draw useful conclusions based on extreme observations. However, there are important lessons investors would be well-served to remember: Capital markets generally reward long-term investors, and having a resolute investing approach may better prepare you for the next crisis and its aftermath.
Read MoreShould You Invest in Cryptocurrencies? (And What Are They Anyway?)
We’ve recently gotten some questions about investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, so I want to take this chance to talk about them. To avoid burying the lede, let me just say this up front: they really aren’t viable investment options.
Read MoreThe Problems with Indexing
Index funds dominate the passive management landscape (though they are not the entirety). But just because there’s no way to guess which active managers will do well in the future doesn’t mean index funds don’t have problems themselves.
Read More5 Companies Comprise One-Third of S&P 500 Returns – Is This the Death of Diversification?
Everyone is always eager to declare the death of diversification. They say it fails in a crisis, that correlations are going up throughout the markets, or that building a diversified portfolio is just too dang time-consuming and expensive (seriously). Now people are ringing the same death knell because so much of the market’s returns are…
Read MoreHow Should Your Asset Allocation Look in Retirement?
Asset allocations come in many shapes and sizes, but they’re never more important than when you enter retirement.
Read More