Headlines are proclaiming a rebound in the residential housing market, but investors and homeowners should be cautious. In March home prices rose on a national average by 10.9 percent from a year earlier, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s Case Shiller index, marking three straight months of year-over-year growth. Prices are still off the […]

We have completed an extensive review of data pertaining to gold and our recommended gold mining stocks. In light of alternative investment vehicles that are available we have concluded that these shares no longer provide the optimal means of ensuring exposure to the gold price. Investors should sell their gold mining shares and reinvest the

With April 15 fast approaching, we would like to point to several observations regarding federal income taxes that might be of interest to our readers. According to IRS data, 143,399,737 individual tax returns were filed for calendar year 2011. Of this total 1,481,966, or roughly one percent, were subjected to an IRS examination (audited) during

Investors who heeded our simple, timeless principles and followed our recommended allocations would have generated respectable returns during 2012. This is also true for longer time periods (see page 2 for hypothetical returns on our recommended portfolios). • I will understand my own circumstances and formulate an investment plan based on my needs, not in

Eugene Fama, whose groundbreaking work on asset pricing and capital markets has been at the core of our investment strategy since the late 1990s, has been awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics along with Robert Shiller and Lars Peter Hansen. Widely recognized as the father of modern finance, Professor Fama is perhaps best known

The field of finance is among the most successful branches of economics thanks largely to rapid advances in computer technology that began in the early 1960s. In particular the Fama-French three factor model, which has been tested exhaustively over many time periods and throughout global markets, has emerged as the pre-eminent standard for evaluating alternative

Volatility is back. Just as many people were starting to think markets only ever move in one direction, the pendulum has swung the other way. Anxiety is a completely natural response to these events. Acting on those emotions, though, can end up doing us more harm than good. There are a number of tidy-sounding theories

Bill Gross rocked the mutual fund industry in late September by resigning from Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO), the firm he founded in 1971, to join Janus Capital. Much of the ensuing media coverage has focused on the human drama surrounding his decision, rather than the important lesson this episode provides for investors. PIMCO describes

In a world of fiat currencies the threat of unexpected price inflation is always with us. While many articles and commentators decry inflation, they do so for the wrong reasons because they tell only a partial story. They frequently ignore the fact that while many suffer from rising price levels, others gain. Make no mistake:

College grads often wonder whether to pay down student debt first or to save for retirement. Financially savvy folks recognize the need to save for retirement sooner than later, but they also know the detriment of carrying a large debt burden. To answer this quantitatively, you must compare your expected rate of return on retirement