No good product goes unabused by Wall Street. Such is the case with exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Our readers will recognize that we recommend several ETFs. These allow investors to take a stake in several of our recommended asset class indexes at an extremely low cost. However, ETFs have grown exponentially in a very short period […]

As of mid-March, common stocks, as measured by the S&P 500, had reached a five-year high. Pundits love to seize upon this type of “factoid.” It has provided fodder for facile prognosticators, both Bull (Good times are back!) and Bear (The market has gone nowhere in five years!). What is an investor to do when

The demise of the traditional pension plan has accelerated rapidly in recent months. The enclosed article explores the root causes of this phenomenon. Workers who are not prepared to assume more responsibility for their retirement planning may end up working far longer than they had hoped. Defined benefit plans, as their name suggests, pay a

• I will understand my own circumstances and formulate an investment plan based on my needs, not in anticipation of market trends.• I will remind myself that investing is not a form of entertainment—if I have an urge to gamble, I will go to Las Vegas and leave my investment portfolio alone.• I will stick

Gold bullion closed in London at $502.50 per ounce on December 2. The P.M. fix had not been above $500 since 1987. Even though, as shown in the chart below, the dollar price of gold had been steadily increasing for five years or so, it was the $500 “milestone” that put gold back in the

In February 2006 Ben Bernanke will take over as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The change brings to an end the Chairmanship of Alan Greenspan, which began in August 1987. While much has been written about the change in command, this is but one more bit of news that has been absorbed by the financial

The answer is D. Who’d a thunk? The sage of Omaha, that venerable value investor, the patron saint of stock pickers, Warren Buffett, is a devotee of index-fund investing. The basic precepts of passive investing are being increasingly adopted, if more subtly, by the investing community. For example, Both Lipper and Morningstar, the biggest names

“You make more money selling advice than following it. It’s one of the things we count on in the magazine business—along with the short memory of our readers.” —Steve Forbes, Forbes Magazine, The Anderson School, University of California at Los Angeles, April 19, 2003. We appreciate Mr. Forbes’ candor. He is correct; it is easy