On top of concerns that the stock market may be highly overvalued right now, investors also have to worry about their bond portfolios.  With interest rates continuing to hover around historic lows, bond investors worry that as rates rise, the value of their bonds will drop.  We painfully experienced this effect last May, when interest…
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Simon Lack, author of The Hedge Fund Mirage, and previously a member of J. P. Morgan’s hedge fund due-diligence team in the early 1990s, argues that hedge funds are overpriced, non-transparent, and provide poor returns over time.  During a talk at the CFA Institute’s annual conference in Seattle earlier this year he explained that hedge…
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Aon Hewitt, the global benefits consulting firm, analyzed 14 defined contribution plans representing over 723,000 individual participants over the seven-year period from 2006 through 2012 to determine how participant behavior affected portfolio risk and returns.  Their finding: those who sought help with their investments did significantly better than those who managed their portfolios on their…
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When it comes to investing, there are many things we cannot control.  For example, we cannot control, let alone predict, investment returns.  On the other hand, there are things we can and should control, such as the costs of our investments.  The popularity of index-based mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has risen dramatically over…
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There’s been quite a buzz in the media and in Washington since Michael Lewis appeared on “60 Minutes” a number of weeks ago asserting that the stock market is rigged.  The topic was high frequency trading (HFT), and for those that missed the broadcast (or the subsequent media frenzy), it’s a combination of high speed…
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