Post Archive by Year

Reader Ken pointed to an article titled “Tax Traps for IRA investors in Short ETFs.” While it was written the beginning of this year, when the markets tanked, the issue, however, is still important. Here are some highlights: With the market down about 9% year-to-date, everyone is looking at making money shorting the market. It’s not easy: the downside potential …

I am traveling this weekend, but regular posting will resume on Monday.

Target-date funds, which are widely used in 401k plans because many investors assume they have less risk, failed miserably during last year’s market meltdown. SmartMoney reports that Morningstar now has come out with a new ranking system designed to make it easier to compare these types of funds: Ever since target-date funds were introduced a few years ago, critics have complained …

My latest No Load Fund/ETF Tracker has been posted at:http://www.successful-investment.com/newsletter-archive.phpThe bulls remained the upper hand during the first week of September, and all major indexes gained. Our Trend Tracking Index (TTI) for domestic funds/ETFs has now crossed its trend line (red) to the upside by +7.88% keeping the current buy signal intact. The effective date was June 3, 2009. The …

Two days ago in “A Hopeless Reader,” I talked about the importance of knowing your risk tolerance. Reader Mel had this to say about it: I’m worried too, but going from fully to zero to 75% invested in a matter of days? If I don’t know which way the market is going, I try to pick a percentage–50, 30, etc–that …

One anonymous reader had these comments a few days ago: Can you please explain how someone who appears to advocate Market tracking investing using stop losses can also advocates hedging “the simple hedge strategy”? The 2 strategies seem to be completely opposite approaches to investing. Can you please explain to me why you advocate both approaches, and the advantages of …