The Big Picture for the Week of February 5, 2012
After 22 trading days so far this year the S&P 500 is up 6.94%. Anyone may have a bullish outlook or bearish one but right here right now the market is rallying and seems like it has a good head of steam behind it.About two months ago I posted abou...
Vanguard on Allocation
Index Universe posted some comments from Vanguard on their thoughts about portfolio construction looking out over the current decade. The headline was Stick to Allocation Strategies and from the standpoint of not giving up on equities, I agree complete...
These Are Good For Investing Too
A friend posted a link on Facebook from MSN titled 11 Health Habits That Will Help You Live to 100. Quite a few of them can apply to investing as well. An ongoing theme on this site has been that it is guaranteed that there will be years that the stock...
Managing Sector Volatility
One part of how I manage the portfolio is monitoring and changing the volatility profile of each sector based on what I think is going on now and what I think comes next based on what is going on now. I mention this in passing far more than I actually ...
A Reader Asks, I Answer
A reader asks;The comment stream is asking you to elaborate as to that portion of your statement wherein you said owning 'dividend growers exclusively' is risky or not advisable...exactly what are the dangers of having an income stream as a primary goa...
More On "Just Don’t Lose It"
I wanted to delve a little further into the Just Don't Lose It cover story from this week's Barron's. The article included some sort of model portfolio that US Trust is apparently recommending to its clients. There were a couple of different things in ...
Sunday Morning Coffee
The Barron's cover story was titled Just Don't Lose It and it tried to explore the extent to which investor psychology has shifted to being more skeptical or distrusting and the article also tried to offer some solutions. Candidly the article was a lit...
The Big Picture for the Week of January 29, 2012
A friend posted this on Facebook and I thought it was a very useful quote. As a matter of personal philosophy I believe that investors have a much better chance of portfolio success once they figured out what makes them tick, what is really important t...
MarketWatch Says Retirement is Endangered
Robert Powell from MarketWatch posted a reasonably thorough assessment as to why retirement in the US is "endangered" with topics ranging from Social Security not being able to meet its obligation to why various demographic segments should expect a hig...
Japan has a Trade Deficit
Yesterday was a busy day for me so I am not sure how much attention this got but Japan recorded its first trade deficit since 1980. Japan has always exported a ton of stuff and imported all of its oil. The earthquake on March 11, 2011 shut down the nuc...
A Foundation to an Investment Philosophy
Josh Brown had a fun post up yesterday about his Twenty Common Sense Investing Rules. While I would probably frame some of the points differently and don't necessarily agree with all of them there is plenty of utility in the post.Josh's number 4;The mo...
Barron’s on Dividends
The Barron's cover story was about seeking a 4% yield from stocks. It was a broad look across many sectors in the S&P 500 at stocks that have the room to increase their dividends substantially or in some cases initiate a substantial dividend.My tak...
