The S&P 500 is the most popular index fund by far among investors, because they think it’s better to be more diversified, to manage risk. Reality tells a different story though. The world of investing is riddled with so many myths that it would even be fair to categorize the whole thing as mythology. There […]
It is believed that small cap stocks lose more during pullbacks because they are smaller and therefore more sensitive to economic downturns. The real reason is simpler than that. It shouldn’t be as difficult and complicated to understand the movement of stock prices as we try to make it. The issue with small caps unsurprisingly […]
Demand for oil has dropped off so much from the current slowdown that the recent agreement to cut production by 10 million barrels a day hasn’t come close to fixing this. We invest in stocks presumably to make money, although when we look at how oil stocks have done over the last 6 years, there’s […]
Legendary hedge fund investor Ray Dalio is particularly known for his understanding of bonds, and has made billions from them. He now thinks that it is “crazy” for investors to hold them. Ray Dalio’s story is a true rags-to-riches one, where he quit his job one day to venture off on his own with just […]
Burton Malkiel’s influence upon stock market thinking has been remarkable. He’s still promoting market randomness at age 87, and remains pretty bullish. Former Princeton economic professor Burton Malkiel has written a few books on investing, including the iconic A Random Walk Down Wall St: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing. He’s also the father of […]
While there remains some serious questions out there as to where stocks may be headed during the coming economic recovery, Amazon is going up even more now. Stock selection is a lot more important than the great majority of investors realize, and when the market becomes as embattled as it has been, the stakes go […]
There is a wide range of opinion about how bad the economic crisis that we are in will be and if and when we will ever recover. Quantitative analysis can shed real light on this. In the financial world, we normally think of quantitative analysis, or QA, as the study of the movement of asset […]
Stock market strategist Peter Schiff was once regarded as “Dr. Doom” for his pessimistic views of the housing market. He’s seeing the potential for doom once again. Calling someone “Dr. Doom” is only an insult if the doom that you see is that exaggerated. Equity strategist and stock market commentator Peter Schiff did seem to […]
While stocks in emerging markets such as India generally lag U.S. stocks considerably, they do have their time and place. This looks like it may be the time and place to act. Many investors don’t put much thought into their decisions, and will instead just follow popular investing ideas just because they are popular, with […]
The Federal Reserve normally confines its bond buying to U.S. treasuries, and its buying corporate bonds is a big departure. Buying corporate junk bonds is even more so. The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States normally only seeks to manage the economy by taking actions that either increase or decrease the country’s money supply, […]