It's the last day of Cyber Security awareness month, and hopefully you have spent some time considering the state of your current cyber-risks. Are your passwords strong enough? Are the systems you're using secure? Are the people you're working with competent enough to protect your data? Here, Fidelity gives investors a checklist of their own to focus on improving cyber security. Online security is a shared responsibility. We believe that having a close partnership with you helps keep you safe, which is why we encourage you to enhance our security measures by taking some actions on your … [Read more...]
Are Stop-Losses More Dangerous in Today’s Volatile Markets?
I have warned investors many times about the undependability and general riskiness of using stop-loss orders. When markets get volatile it's hard to beat the folks with the best technology. And even when you're competing on even ground, markets can simply become overwhelmed with stop-losses in a panic. Then your money is facing terrible odds. Dick and Matt Young and I made not using stop-losses our number one recommendation for 2016. This turned out to be good advice, especially if you were trading in currencies this year. Chelsey Dulaney writes at The Wall Street Journal. A report from the … [Read more...]
State of Rhode Island Terminates Hedge Fund Investments
Back in 2013 I warned about Rhode Island's pension fund investments in high-fee hedge funds, writing here: It has allocated 25% of its plan to alternative investments, or hedge funds and private equity. Enormous fees are paid to these guys for an investment that a) is illiquid and b) has a subjective price. There are a lot of retired teachers out there who have no idea how poorly their money is being invested. Again earlier this year I reiterated this warning: The state of Rhode Island has been a big-time investor, through its pensions, in hedge funds. Retired teachers who depend on this … [Read more...]
Is Your Valuable Credit Card Information at Risk Right Now?
October is Cyber Security awareness month , and I've been writing (read here, here, and here) that you must protect yourself from hackers and scammers. Today The Wall Street Journal published an article warning about the dangers of "no-card-present" online transactions that could drain your credit card balance. After a massive industry undertaking to secure point of sale transactions with chip enabled credit cards, hackers have moved to the one place where there are still no chip readers, the internet. Robin Sidel writes for the Journal: As a result, online merchants and the card industry … [Read more...]
Fidelity Sees Yen as Low at 120
Keeping long-term bond yields at zero is never a good strategy for currency strength. But that is exactly what the Bank of Japan is doing. As a result, the dollar has strengthened 4% against the yen over the last month. Perhaps the only thing holding the yen up this high is the market's disbelief in the Federal Reserve's readiness to raise rates. Janet Yellen's recent speech about running the economy at "high pressure" (Read: inflationary) only reinforced the market's belief that no interest rate increase is forthcoming. That could be the yen lifeline Tokyo is looking for. Bloomberg … [Read more...]
Is Your Home Security Camera actually Spying on You?
It's a hard thought to swallow, but could your home security system be turned against you? What about your web-connected baby monitor? Have you changed the passwords on these devices since you purchased them? If not, Hannah Kuchler writes for the Financial Times that you may be leaving yourself open to cyber spying, or having your devices hijacked, and used against others in what are known as Directed Denial of Service attacks. Make sure you change default passwords on all your internet connected devices. October is Cyber Security awareness month, and there's no better time than now to check … [Read more...]
Monday 6:30am: It’s A Brand New Day
You’ll get your first view of U.S. third-quarter economic growth this week. The U.S. economy advanced at a pathetic 1.1% rate through the first half of the year. The Atlanta Fed cut its estimate to 2.4% from 2.8%. In any event, looking at an eighth straight quarter of growth below 3% is not very exciting. I like to think about GDP at the basic level, as though it’s a paycheck. Imagine two workers, A and B over their 40-year careers. If A can increase his salary by 4%, then after 40-years he will have increased it five times vs worker B’s doubling it after growing at only 2%. Time, and a … [Read more...]
Your Retirement Life: Survival is Your Friend
“I was married for thirty years, with three children and a house to manage and doing lots of charity work. Then came the divorce…” a reader wrote to me. I called her up this week and we talked. Our conversation wasn’t about her divorce. In fact it only came up once. We talked more about the success of her family and the financial independence they have achieved. But as she tells it, when she talks with them about their childhood they tell her it wasn’t always the best. I asked her what she meant by that. She said, "We didn’t have a lot of extra money for expensive vacations.” She explained, … [Read more...]
There is Only One Vanguard
We are often asked why we like Vanguard and Fidelity. Below is an excerpt from the February 2014 issue of Richard C. Young's Intelligence Report in which Dick Young explains his history with Jack Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group. As we all know, there is only one Vanguard. P.P.S. In 2014, investors poured $216 billion into the Vanguard Group, which today is #1 in index-tracking products. I have been with Vanguard from the start. Vanguard founder Jack Bogle was at Wellington Management back in the early seventies in Boston. Wellington was an institutional account of mine in the years I was … [Read more...]
Cyber Attacks: Are You Safe with Vanguard?
October is Cyber Security awareness month. There's probably no online account more important for you to protect than your retirement nest egg. It's your life's savings, and everything you've been working toward for decades. See here how Vanguard protects clients' data and accounts from cyber attack. … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 197
- 198
- 199
- 200
- 201
- …
- 258
- Next Page »