Do you still have too much invested in stocks? At Young Research, we’ve long favored a balanced strategy. Why do we favor a balanced approach? The simple fact is that an all-stock portfolio has more volatility than most investors are comfortable with. This is especially true for conservative investors and those investors in or nearing retirement. If you are on the verge of retirement, can you afford to sustain a 50% loss in your portfolio? Stocks fell 50% twice in the last decade alone, and it could happen again. With a balanced portfolio, you minimize the risk of portfolio-decimating … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2011
This One Thing Could Save Your Life and Your Portfolio
You might think I’m crazy buying $175 sneakers. I’ve never spent that kind of money on sneakers before, and it’s at least double what I’ve normally spent in the past. So I’m calling my Newton sneakers an investment. I was introduced to Newton sneakers by my Pilates teacher and trainer, Jane Beezer, as we were discussing the book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. It’s reshaping the sneaker industry. And as it turns out, less is more. Years of running injuries can be tied back to a sneaker industry that babied our feet with too much cushion, encouraging a heel-first strike point rather … [Read more...]
Down 72% in 6 Days
This week, another Chinese company came under scrutiny as possibly perpetrating fraud on its shareholders. Toronto-listed and China-based Sino Forest is under investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission (the SEC’s Canadian counterpart), after a report released by research firm Muddy Waters, accused Sino Forest of “aggressively committing fraud since its RTO in 1995.” The allegations in the Muddy Waters report have been refuted by Sino Forest, but the market smells a rat. Sino’s shares have cratered over 73.3% since the report was released. And we aren’t talking about a penny stock here. … [Read more...]
Rogers: Only a Crisis Can Fix U.S. Debt Problem
Jamie Dimon vs. Ben Bernanke
My Top Internet Investment
I have an Internet investment that I want to tell you about. It is a guaranteed winner. A guaranteed winner? Yup, and it is one of the safest investments you’ll ever make. You might be skeptical. Internet stocks are risky. Some analysts are talking about a Web 2.0 bubble. Shares of LinkedIn, the social networking site, doubled on their debut. And Yandex, Russia’s version of Google, came public at a price-to-earnings ratio over 75X—that’s not cheap. If you invested in Internet stocks in the late 1990s, this may all sound eerily familiar to you. You wouldn’t dare make an Internet investment … [Read more...]
A Little Mistake That Can Cost Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars
You being in the top 97th percentile in good looks and wealth might be good. But being in the top 97th percentile in the fees you pay your investment advisor is…not so good. PriceMetrix, a wealth-management software firm, has come out with a report showing that a significant variation in pricing exists between investment advisors. The firm has quite a database to pull from—15,000 advisor books, 2.3 million investors, 380 million transactions, 1 million fee-based accounts, and over $850 billion in investment assets. The study examined the pricing on balanced accounts for households with … [Read more...]