In my recent post about the potential Chinese bubble, reader Ron responded that stock markets can’t be controlled by governments. While that may be true, government decisions or policy changes, however, can be just as effective in controlling market direction. Such was the case yesterday when the Chinese government announced a tripling of the tax on stock trading to curb …
No Load Fund Investing For Busy People
I referenced articles from fool.com before, but their latest one did not sit well with my kind of thinking. It’s titled “Great Investments for Busy People” and quotes Vanguard founder John Bogle as saying that mutual funds were the finest vehicles for long-term investing ever designed. I can agree with that and realize that his statement was probably made prior …
ETF Investing: Low Fees vs. Lower Fees
MarketWatch had a story on Vanguard’s filing of a new ETF tracking the well known MSCI EAFE Index (Morgan Stanly Capital International Europe, Australia, Far East Index). The buzz is that it will be a directly competing product with Barclay’s well known iShares MSCI EAFE fund better known as EFA. This ETF has been well liked by many investors, and …
From the Archives: ETFs vs. Index Funds
A couple of weeks ago, the WSJ featured another article comparing Index Funds and ETFs titled “A Close Race, a Surprising Finish.” With the help of Morningstar, they crunched some ETF numbers all the way back to 1997 and looked at before and after-tax returns. The ‘before-tax’ analysis is shown in the table below (double click to enlarge): The surprising …
Investment Management: When to Hold ‘Em—When to Fold ‘Em
During the last week, a few newsletter readers had questions about the use of sell stops as they pertain to my trend tracking methodology. Here’s one e-mail: I have some mutual funds that are in nose bleed territory, and I have mental sell stops which are about 6-8% below current price. How do you suggest handling these individual funds, which …
Facing Portfolio Reality
With the markets having been in a rally mode for the past 9 months, some of your no load fund/ETF holdings are most likely showing different gains. If you listen to some of the media, however, you should sell your laggards and load up on the winners. While it’s certainly advisable during an uptrend to sell an underperformer (I have …