Wander through a cemetery and you’ll frequently see phrases like “forever in our hearts” or “You will always be remembered.” The cemetery of mutual funds is devoid of such loving reminiscences, but if you look at the latest monuments – to funds that passed in 2021 – you will see a number of recurring descriptions, …
Walking my dog through the neighborhood last week, I came upon a friend who gave me his standard greeting for these occasional chance walk-bys: “What do you like in the market right now?” He knows I’m not handing out stock tips, but he usually follows it up by name-dropping, or we’ll spend a few moments …
The big financial headline this week is the unveiling of the first-ever bitcoin-linked exchange-traded fund, which made its debut on Tuesday. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (ticker: BITO) is a possible game-changer and can be looked at in many ways, but it’s not the bitcoin fund investors have been waiting and hoping for. Plenty of …
At some point in the not-too-distant future, the last year of stock market gains will be a footnote to history. Rebounding from a precipitous drop as the world lurched into the pandemic in March of 2020, the stock market reversed course and gained more than 50 percent, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500, …
(This column was released for publication on Dec. 30, 2020.) In a year filled with entirely too much death, no one should mourn the passing of a mutual fund. Funds and ETFs don’t deserve your grief. They’re useful tools, not friends or loved ones, even when they help you succeed. Hundreds of them die every …
(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 …
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 …
The only question left for manager David Winters when it was announced recently that he will close his Wintergreen Fund was “What took you so long?” The fund is dead last in its Morningstar Inc. asset category over the last three and five years, but also the last three months. It is within …
