Investing

November 30, 2011

The game of long-term financial planning has changed. There are many reasons for this change: the inevitable impact of our government's massive debts, the high likelihood that the stock market will continue its ten-year-plus underperformance for at least another decade or more, also that the economy will be weaker than normal for a long time to come, that the current historically low interest rates cannot be maintained, and that the dollar will unavoidably become much weaker at some point have all combined to change the game.


October 12, 2011

I will be hosting a weekly radio show based on the premise that for the last 25 years, Americans have been sold a destructive system of personal money management—a system that never worked and never will. It's time for an approach that works. It’s time to spend smart, invest successfully and live the life you want. That’s Money Smart Radio.


September 23, 2011

The bigger picture is a monumental tug of war between the huge, unresolved, real world problems our economy is facing and the self-serving "things are good" spin from the financial services industry and, until now, from our government. We are facing huge unresolved economic problems that have been building for 15+ years and that our government cannot solve- problems with jobs, housing, burdensome government regulation and mountains of consumer, corporate, and government debt that must be wrung out, and painfully, in the real world. News like today's should be taken as a reminder and a motivator to put your own financial house in order.


August 25, 2011

No one including Morningstar can reliably identify which mutual funds are likely to outperform the market, let alone match it, and so Index Funds are the best way to invest in the stock market.


July 28, 2011

The problem with the Morningstar rating system is that strong short term fund performance is meaningless since the majority of the 4-5 star funds drop to 3 stars or less within a few short years. When the ratings drop, investors are advised to invest their money in the next set of 4-5 star funds. The result is both investment underperformance and additional losses from paying the substantial commissions required by the fund switch. This cycle is extremely damaging and yet is the norm.