As interest rates continue to hover at historical lows, many people (including some investment advisors) express concerns about investing in fixed income mutual funds.  The issue – for those who are not familiar with bonds – is that when rates rise, bond prices fall, and vice-versa.  The fear is that bond funds, which hold numerous…
Read more

Ben Graham, mentor of Warren Buffett, is commonly credited as the father of value investing.  His book The Intelligent Investor, first written in 1949, promotes the idea of investing only in companies with a high ratio of book value to market value.  That is, companies whose total net asset value (the value of all assets…
Read more

The year 2017 is shaping up to be one of the best years in a generation for international stock market investing. Jeff Kleintop at Charles Schwab points out that this is the only year in the 30-year history of the MSCI All Country World Index in which, at least through October, the global stock market…
Read more

Let me say right from the outset that this post is not about politics.  It’s about investing.  And it’s generally not a good idea to mix the two. You may have heard that earlier this year Point Bridge Capital LLC in Fort Worth, Texas filed for the creation of a new ETF focused on those…
Read more

When someone contacts me about getting help with his or her investments, more often than not during the discussion a question comes up about the level of returns I‘ve gotten for my clients. I would like to address the various implications of such a question in the hope that it may help some readers better…
Read more