One day the DJIA is down 500 pts. The next it’s up 300 pts. The next it’s down 700 pts before reversing course to close up 900 pts. The next... Whatever happens on a daily basis you can call us Jimmy Crack Corn because we don’t care. It’s a frustrating time. We’re loathe to comment [...]
To everyone who blindly believes in indexing we offer congratulations. Yesterday you successfully captured 100% of the downside. Kudos to you on a job well done. In the interim here's a piece from MorningstarAdvisor revisiting a paper published in 1994 that asked the provocative question, "Why Not 100% Equities?"
A hostile, anti-business Administration has Corporate America running scared. Fearful of being sued many companies are revamping their retirement plans NOT in the best interests of their employees but, instead, solely to avoid being sued for not focusing on providing “low cost” options. We previously wrote about the Supreme Court decision and foreshadowed the fallout. [...]
“To them I say don’t believe the hype.” - Chuck D “Yo Chuck they must be on the pipe, right?” - Flavor Flav (Obscure references to Styx and Public Enemy in the same post? Time for a self-congratulatory pat on the back!) We’re not going to accuse the financial services industry of smoking crack but [...]
W. Scott Simon often serves in litigation and arbitrations as an expert witness on fiduciary issues. Similarly he frequently writes about the Uniform Prudent Investor Act. Consider the following from a recent article he authored about the problem with disclosing conflicts of interest: “Disclosures of conflicts made by many financial services providers tell you just [...]
Some rather provocative words from Barry Ritholtz: 3 simple rules will explain 99% of human behavior 1) Most people don’t think. 2) Some people are jerks. 3) Everyone is selling something. — Barry Ritholtz (@ritholtz) June 15, 2015 Point #3 reminds me of the sentiment, ‘everyone has an agenda.’ I fought this for the longest [...]
Effective July 9th the IRS amended §401(a)(9) of the Internal Revenue Code. Notice 2015-49 guides that qualified defined benefit plans will generally not be permitted to replace any joint and survivor (“J&S”), single life (“SLA”) or other annuity in current payment status with a lump-sum or other accelerated payment form.
There’s a fantastic exchange between President Andrew Shepherd and his aide Lewis Rothschild from 1995’s The American President written by Aaron Sorkin: Lewis Rothschild: “People want leadership…and in the absence of genuine leadership they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone...They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage [...]
As investors clamor for indexing and other forms of passive investment they don't seem to appreciate the hidden costs. One estimate has it at 3x the annual operating expenses of the fund. As always...caveat emptor.
Sex sells. This isn't a surprise. But while we're titillated (how's that for a delicious pun?) by financial porn the feeling is fleeting. The results are disastrous. Just how bad is it? Kudos to Jimmy Atkinson at Fund Reference for putting together this plain language comparison (with pretty charts for the USA Today crowd) for [...]