Investments

As the world’s stock markets took a vicious tumble in late summer and early fall, one of the market’s most prescient observers issued a warning: don’t sell now. Burton Malkiel, economics professor at Princeton and author of “A Random Walk Down Wall Street,” wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal urging investors to ignore the market’s recent trends and to focus on […]

Any investor should be willing to admit 2011 was a pretty crazy year for the markets. They were churned through the year by a weather and nuclear disaster in Japan, a deadlock over finances in Congress that led to a downgrade of U.S. debt, and a major crisis in Europe that threatened to blow apart the European Union and end […]

Two of America’s eminent investment researchers were recently asked whether the hyperactive markets of the last few years indicate that the concept of buy-and-hold investing is outdated. Their answer? Absolutely not, reports the Journal of Indexes in its May-June issue. “Obviously, it would be much better if we knew when the market was going to go down 40 percent, and we could […]

Investors have a lot of choice when deciding how to handle market fluctuations. Many opt for “tactical asset allocation”—in other words, they move out of stocks, for example, when they think returns will be bad, and move back in when they expect better returns. Many others choose a better strategy—they spread their money among a bunch of different asset classes […]

A long-held axiom among professional investors says that diversifying a portfolio by adding international stocks helps to reduce risk and enhance returns. But as the world’s developed economies in Asia and Europe have become more tightly entwined, critics have argued that global investing’s allure has declined because stock market patterns in major markets have converged. Rex Sinquefield, who helped develop […]

Stock markets worldwide have been rallying for nearly two years now. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index hit a low of 676 on March 9, 2009 and has risen ever since. In late February it was in the 1330 range. Yet the average investor doesn’t seem to trust the trend, and plenty of professionals are skeptical as well. Worries over […]

As decision makers we spend a lot of time wallowing in the past. We project recent trends forward, expecting things will pretty much go on as they have been. Unfortunately, this tendency, termed “recency bias” by cognitive psychology, often does not give you a good guide to the future. Nowhere is this more true than in the investment markets. Here […]

Low interest rates at the bank and scary volatility in investment markets has created a market for shady high yield investment programs (HYIPs) that prey on unsophisticated investors, warns the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which regulates U.S.securities firms. If you or someone you know are offered a high yield investment that claims to provide safety, liquidity, and above-market interest rates, […]

Savers have been frustrated by super-low short-term interest rates since the 2008 financial crisis forced central banks worldwide to slash rates. Despite forecasts that government stimulus spending and rising national deficits would spark inflation and higher rates, inflation and interest rates have remained stubbornly low. What is a saver who wants a decent interest rate to do? The chart of […]

One of this country’s preeminent financial economists and historians believes the stock market is a great buy today. In fact, when compared to similar periods over the last 200 years of stock market history, all of the unsettling events of recent years have contributed to the market’s positive prospects, says Jeremy J. Siegel of the Wharton School and author of […]