This whole low-interest rate environment seems to be getting a little out of hand. On Friday, the Bank of Japan surprised everybody and cut the interest rate they charge banks on excess reserves into negative territory. According to the WSJ, “Over a fifth of global gross domestic product, or 23.1%, will now be produced in…

I just finished The Index Card by Harold Pollack and Helaine Olen. It’s a really good personal finance book for those who need to understand a handful of simple steps you need to take to get your finances in order. I love the idea of narrowing down your financial philosophy so that it fits on an index…

Information is a double-edged sword in the investment industry. Investors now have access to more opinions, analysis, real-time prices and research than ever before. It cannot be overstated how much this has changed the investment landscape when you compare it to how things once were in the pre-Internet stone age of insider tips, expensive research…

Finance is a competitive industry so it’s not surprising that performance numbers are the main focal point. Advertisements always discuss a fund family’s best performing funds. The first thing anyone looks at in a pitch book is a fund’s performance track record. Annual return numbers are the currency in which most investment firms stake their livelihood….

The price of oil seems to be at the forefront of every market and economic conversation these days. That tends to happen when one of the most important commodities on the planet falls 80% in a short period of time. Is it too much supply? Not enough demand? The pricing in of future technological advancements? Speculators?…

A couple weeks ago I looked some of the reasons behind the fact that smart money tends to chase past performance. I received a couple of good follow-up questions from people in the industry who were curious about my thoughts on how to judge a portfolio manager or investment process.

Yesterday was a wild day in the markets. There was a huge gap down at the open, which followed through into the afternoon. Then there was a huge rally late in the day with another minor slide into the close. The NASDAQ was down 3.65% at the low of the day by lunch time. At 3:30…

Richard Bernstein of RBA Advisors came out this week with his firm’s version of Asset Allocation 2.0:

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but here are three important aspects of money management that really matter during a stock market sell-off:

The stock market is a forward-looking indicator. Markets are meant to discount future cash flows and events to a present value. It’s not always right — stocks have predicted four out of the last eight recessions and so on —  but investors are constantly looking for signals in stock prices to shape their current outlook….