Millennials get a bad rap from the media and the older generations. They’re selfish. They’re not motivated. They live in their parent’s basement. They take too many selfies. They don’t have all of the same dreams and aspirations of prior generations.
Uncle Sam Loves Active Mutual Funds
Morningstar’s Jeffrey Ptak posted some insightful data on Twitter over the long holiday weekend. Take a look at these 10 year performance numbers for actively managed mutual funds once you account for the effects of taxes on investment returns:
The Retirement (Expectations) Crisis
It’s become a weekly occurrence to read about America’s retirement crisis. Pensions are underfunded. Americans aren’t saving enough and face a huge shortfall. Social security and medicare are both overextended and face demographic headwinds. I have yet to see a large group of retirees waiting in a bread line, so I don’t think we can…
What If Factor Risk Premiums Go Away?
A reader asks: Will there be any significant premiums in the future? What is the future of risk premiums? With the amount of competition in the markets nowadays this a legitimate concern. You can now invest in almost any strategy imaginable for pennies on the dollar and do so in a diversified, tax-efficient manner. This…
Q&A With Charles Kirk, Part II
If you missed part I in my Q&A with Charles Kirk, from The Kirk Report, see here. Here’s part II:
Q&A With Charles Kirk
One of the easiest ways to build a larger audience as a blogger is to have someone who has already made it link to your work or recommend your material to their readers. You can also get a sense of who the most respected people are based on how loyal their readership is because of…
Consulting & The Smart Money Herd Mentality
Institutional investors are often referred to as the ‘smart money’ or ‘sophisticated investors.’ For some funds this is true, but many of these large pools of capital make the same exact mistakes as mom and pop retail investors. It’s just that the reasons are different. Here are a few studies to consider: One study looked…
10 Rules For Attending a Conference
I’ve got a few conferences I’ll be attending in the coming months, so I thought it would be a good time to review the etiquette and unwritten rules for conference attendees. Here are my top ten, in no particular order: 1. Never ask a question right before lunch or cocktail hour. This one should be fairly…
The Lingering Effects of the Financial Crisis
We’re well into the seventh year of an economic and stock market recovery. The economic expansion hasn’t been as robust as many would like and the recovery has been uneven, as some have fared better than others in the aftermath of the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression. But you can’t deny that things…
Faulty Assumptions
One of the reasons so many people have such a difficult time with their finances is because they come into the process with faulty assumptions. There are unrealistic and ill-informed expectations that set people back from the start.