Hedge Fund Bubble
You’re going to love this. Hedge funds had a terrible year. As of mid-December, the Dow Jones Credit Suisse Core Hedge Fund Index was off 8%. The index is an aggregate of funds using seven different hedging strategies: convertible arbitrage, emerging markets, event driven, fixed-income arbitrage, global... Read the full story
Dividend Religion
Here’s a shocker: Sun Life, Canada’s third-biggest insurer, will stop U.S. sales of variable annuities and life insurance to individuals at year-end due to “unfavorable product economies.” In other words, you’re not the only one getting slammed by the Fed’s artificially low interest rates.... Read the full story
Bond Dilemma
You might as well throw darts at the financial pages. To Burton Malkiel, who authored the book A Random Walk Down Wall Street, picking stocks is about randomness. He believes that all knowable information is priced into stocks and bonds when you buy them. I’ve been reviewing my sixth edition of Random... Read the full story
Best Buy Annuities
You don’t want to forget your sunglasses. I made that mistake before going in to a Best Buy recently. Blinded by the bright lights, I felt like I was in an airplane hangar with a wall of TV echoes to match. It’s no surprise to me the stock is off by 50% in five years. The same HD marketing blitz... Read the full story
The $100,000 Range Rover Boom!
You can go to a local U.S. Range Rover dealership this weekend and buy a nicely equipped Range Rover HSE for $85,000 or a Supercharged for over $100,000. If you finance it in U.S. dollars, at least you know what you owe. If you want to be as fancy as your new car, you can borrow in a foreign currency... Read the full story
Retirement Stocks
You want to be paid well for investing in this market. Young Research’s 32-stock Retirement Compounders portfolio average dividend yield pays 5%. Compound that for 15 or 16 years and you double your money. Run your finger along the black line, the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, beginning... Read the full story
Vanguard Wellesley Up 7.7%
Your risk tolerance probably isn’t as high as you think. Go back to September of this year or 2008 and be honest with yourself about how you felt. Did you lose sleep worrying about your portfolio? One back-of-the-napkin approach to getting a handle on your risk is to put your age in bonds. If... Read the full story
A Pathetic Payday
Doing less, with less, is one way to describe retirement on a fixed income today. This sad truth is illustrated by Young Research’s proprietary Payday Indicator, the average of the Dow Jones Industrial Average yield plus the three-month Treasury bill yield. In the history of the series, it has never... Read the full story
Got Jobs?
You want to retire to a state where there are jobs. Not because you might need one someday, though you might. I’m thinking for insurance reasons. States without jobs are states without revenue. And they may be eyeballing your nest egg someday like a ravenous rodent. It’s not a bad idea to have the... Read the full story
A Country in Decline
Newport, Rhode Island, is a wonderful place to visit this time of year. The crisp air is rejuvenating. The sun reflects brilliantly off the water. And after the craziness of summer, the less crowded streets make it a great port of call. A new ship seems to be here daily—like the beautiful Queen Elizabeth... Read the full story
