Tim Maurer looks at how the GOP’s new tax plan could affect you and your money. Tim Maurer makes an appearance on Nightly Business Report to discuss how the proposed Republican tax plan could affect middle-income Americans, home buyers and, perhaps, even retirement savers. View the Video By clicking on any of the links above,…
Mutual fund rating systems really only do a great job of “predicting” the past. Larry Swedroe reviews the research. The holy grail for mutual fund investors is the ability to identify in advance which of the very few active mutual funds will outperform in the future. To date, an overwhelming body of academic research has…
Worried about equity valuations? Trying to time the market to sit out a correction? Take Larry Swedroe’s short quiz. We have data for 91 calendar years (or 1,092 months) of U.S. investment returns over the period 1927 through 2016. The average monthly return to the S&P 500 has been 0.95%, and the average quarterly return…
Tim Maurer appears on NBR to discuss fund ratings and asset allocation. Following the recent Wall Street Journal critique of Morningstar’s star rating system, Tim Maurer appears on NBR to discuss tools investors can use to investigate mutual funds and why first setting an appropriate asset allocation is so important. View the Video By clicking…
Larry Swedroe reviews results from the new mid-year 2017 SPIVA scorecard. Since 2002, S&P Dow Jones Indices has published its S&P Indices Versus Active (SPIVA) scorecards, which compare the performance of actively managed equity mutual funds to their appropriate index benchmarks. The 2017 midyear scorecard includes 15 years of data. Equity Following are some of the highlights…
One of the big anomalies in finance is that, given the overwhelming evidence showing active management is a loser’s game, so many investors still choose it. Larry Swedroe offers four explanations for this phenomenon The Incredible Shrinking Alpha,” today the percentage of actively managed funds generating statistically significant alpha is less than 2%. We explain…
Despite today’s “flatter” world, global diversification is still the prudent strategy. Ever since the financial crisis, when the correlation of all risky assets rose toward 1, investors have been hearing that the world has become flat and the benefits of international diversification are gone. The explanation generally is that the world market has become more…
Larry Swedroe on SPIVA data showing how poorly it actually stacks up. In a July 2017 Q&A with WealthManagement.com, Western Asset Management CIO Ken Leech asserts that passive investing is unlikely to play as large a role in fixed income as it does now in equities, because active managers outperform their benchmarks much more in the…
If diversification is a free lunch, use the full buffet. In a recent article that highlighted the perils of owning individual stocks, I offered the historical evidence demonstrating how only a small percentage of stocks have accounted for all the gains provided by the market—with the vast majority earning a big, fat zero in aggregate cumulative…
Larry Swedroe on the importance of integrating all risks (not only the investment kind) into an overall financial plan. Larry Swedroe, Director of Research, The BAM ALLIANCE Harry Markowitz received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1990 for his contributions to the body of work known as “modern portfolio theory.” Probably his greatest contribution…
A sound investment plan isn’t the only way to find financial security. Earlier this week, we looked at the importance of incorporating different types of risk—specifically, human capital risk—into an overall financial plan. Today I will focus on mortality and longevity risk, and using “tax alpha” strategies to improve the odds of achieving your financial goals….
Larry Swedroe shows that book-to-market isn’t the only criteria for defining the value factor. Eugene Fama and Kenneth French’s 1992 paper, “The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns,” resulted in the development of the Fama–French three-factor model. This model added the size and value factors to the market beta factor. As my co-author, Andrew Berkin, and…
Helping aging parents with their finances. Role reversal: If you have aging parents, they may need help sorting out their finances. Stuart Vick Smith lays out some steps you can take to help them feel in control of their financial life. Find it on KVUE.com By clicking on any of the links above, you acknowledge…
Larry Swedroe on how the risk of private equity doesn’t always equal higher returns. The term “private equity” is used to describe various types (e.g., buyout funds and venture capital funds) of privately placed (nonpublicly traded) investments. Even though buyout (BO) funds and venture capital (VC) funds have similar organizational and compensation structures, they are…
Larry Swedroe reviews the evidence on how political biases can affect your investing. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light,…