When you think about all the ads that you see and all the media about various money managers beating their benchmarks and doing well and so on. I guess the thing that I would ask you is why do you suppose they’re advertising those particular products? And the answer often is that it’s because those… Continue reading →

If you read the work of pop economists these days, everything and everyone is rational — even if the outcomes make no sense. Take men and women. How have we, collectively as humans, managed to evolve into the dominant global species? The economist’s answer is rational division of labor: Some of our distant ancestors sent… Continue reading →

Regular readers of my column here likely recall that I recently wrote about the move by the California state retirement plan toward retirement indexing over active management. It will take the Calpers system, which manages several hundred billion in retirement funds, some time to make this kind of change — but things will change. For… Continue reading →

When the world’s 12th-largest economy makes a big decision about its finances, you tend to notice. That’s what California is, budget problems aside. Now its state employees retirement fund, CalPERS, is on its way toward quitting the active investing game. Not quitting the markets. Just dropping all pretense that beating the market is a worthwhile… Continue reading →

Is your retirement ready for the next big market crash? What if I told you it doesn’t matter? It doesn’t — if you are properly invested. One of the major lessons learned from the 2008 debacle is that people who remained in the market and avoided panicking came out of things just fine. Clearly, some… Continue reading →

Here’s a smattering of recent headlines. See if you can find rhyme or reason in them, at least in terms of actions you might take — right now, today — in regard to your retirement investing. After-hours buzz: TI, IBM, Best Buy & more Brace for ‘more choppiness,’ strategist says Sell crude on Obama’s Syria… Continue reading →

When working people enter their late 50s or early 60s, most begin to take stock — many for the first time — of their retirement plan investments. Often, they are shocked to find that the reality underlying their plan to fund retirement is dire, even catastrophic. Now, this is not an article to scold savers who… Continue reading →

Better returns can’t be explained any more simply: If you worry about the pennies, the dollars take care of themselves. Often used to explain budgeting, the old adage applies very well to investing, too. That is, if you can keep your cost of retirement investing to a minimum, you will have more money in the… Continue reading →

One of the more mysterious aspects of portfolio management is effective rebalancing. Simply put, it is the disciplined practice of selling investments that have risen in value while buying more of those that have declined. Imagine that you own a portfolio that holds 60% stocks and 40% bonds. Naturally, you check on it periodically. If… Continue reading →