Just like seemingly everything else in 2020, the market has been a place for extremes. From February 20 through March 23 this year, the stock market – as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500 – lost 33 percent of its value. It then gained over 60 percent from that March low to the start …
The stock market has returned to record levels, powered by a few of the world’s biggest and best-known companies. That has spawned talk of how it’s a “stock-picker’s market.” Poppycock. The market observers who say this drivel aren’t particularly observant, or they would have long ago noticed that good stock-picking never goes out of style. …
(This column was released to newspapers on July 14, 2020.) Buyers act differently than owners. That applies to homes, cars, investments and much more. To convince you to buy, something has to meet the right conditions. It must be pristine, perfect, just the right thing, exactly what you are looking for, or some combination …
(This column was released to newspapers on July 7, 2020.) Rick in Maumee, Ohio, has used stay-at-home time during the coronavirus pandemic to “clean up my life.” There was a de-cluttering of the house, followed by a purging of his financial files (in accordance with guidelines I laid out in a recent column). He …
These days, “Don’t look” is an actual investment strategy. It’s not just espoused by plenty of experts, but it is being followed by millions of investors whose portfolios were swamped under the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the accompanying economic shutdown. It’s not a terrible strategy either, at least for investors who had a …
In 35 years covering investments, I have seen “the end” countless times. Dividend investing purportedly was dying while the Internet bubble was inflating in the 1990s, buy-and-hold investing has been on the way out countless times in the last quarter century, asset allocation hasn’t worked as expected throughout the current bull market, international diversification is …
Rich in Orchard Beach, Md., likes to check in on his investment portfolio most nights after dinner. It’s a quick look-see to make sure everything is fine, as expected, all right. It was not any of those things when he checked in on Monday, August 12. His shares of Vanguard Wellesley were …
I attended an investment sales seminar this week where the speaker tried to persuade the audience to take his approach to retirement investing. It involved something most of the audience had never heard of. Pitched as a “7702 Plan,” it was actually a life-insurance policy, a twist on the more standard annuity-sales pitch …
When it comes to mutual funds, investors have always gotten what they didn’t pay for. Now that they aren’t paying much, they need to decide if the money they’re spending is worth the results they’re getting. Morningstar Inc. recently released its latest fund-fee study, which showed that what investors paid to own …
Over breakfast one summer morning in the late 1990s, I asked Vanguard Group founder Jack Bogle – creator of the index fund and staunch believer in passive investing – what he would say to anyone who suggested that frothy times had made it “a stock-picker’s market.” I can’t recall Bogle’s exact answer, but …
