Should You Dollar Hedge Your Foreign Bonds?

Should You Dollar Hedge Your Foreign Bonds?

A well-diversified investment portfolio should at least include bonds as well as stocks. And in the case of bonds, you will discover that there are more sub-asset classes than there are for stocks. Today I’m focusing on bonds issued by foreign governments. One of the challenges with those kinds of bonds is that as a…
Read more

Where To Invest During a Tariff War

A number of readers of my previous article on Trump’s tariff war asked about the best places to invest during the current situation. Let’s explore the various stock markets and sectors to see which ones might make the most sense to take advantage of at this time. We’ll start with those areas that are most…
Read more

Are ETFs Better Than Mutual Funds?

You’re probably familiar with mutual funds. They are arguably the most common type of investment choice for 401(k) and other retirement accounts. But ever since the first exchange-traded fund (ETF) appeared in 1993, investments into ETFs have been steadily overtaking those into traditional mutual funds. Why is this happening? Are ETFs better than mutual funds?…
Read more

Your Risk Tolerance May Be Harmful To Your Investment Health

How can that be? Risk tolerance is the amount of risk that each person is comfortable taking with their investment choices. Just because yours is different from someone else’s doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Or does it? To better understand the issue, it helps to recognize that there are actually two ways that risk – as…
Read more

The Futility Of Predicting Stock Market Returns

One year ago I wrote about the stock market predictions that major investment banks and brokerages seem to feel is a necessary part of their marketing (see https://www.cognizantwealth.com/2024/01/10/a-review-of-2023-stock-market-predictions/ ). Why they spend the time, effort, and money to come up with these guesses is a mystery to me, particularly because those predictions are almost always…
Read more

Index Investing Requires Some Thought

At the turn of the 21st century the majority of mutual funds that invested in equities (stocks) utilized what is called active management. That is, fund managers chose some subset of all publicly-traded companies in which to invest and also decided when to rebalance the various positions held in the fund. The purpose was to…
Read more