April 25, 2012 | Why did many equity mutual fund investors gain only a 3.8% return on their investment portfolios over the past 20 years, while U.S. stocks in general provided an average return of 9.1%? Examining the "emotional gap" between investor returns and investment returns provides significant evidence, financial researchers say.
March 12, 2012 | By Bob Veres There's an important--if somewhat geeky--debate going on in investment circles about the true valuation of the stock market--specifically the S&P 500 index of large companies, and similar indices followed by the Wilshire and Russell organizations. The heart of the debate is surprisingly simple: are today's investors paying more than the historical average price for a dollar of corporate earnings, or less? Why is this important? Because whenever you're paying higher than average prices, it's possible that your expected future return will be below average. If you’re paying lower than average prices, then you have a better hope of getting above-average returns. There are, of course, no guarantees, but in general professional investors prefer bargains to overpaying for a share of stock.
March 7, 2012 | Over the course of a lengthy and illustrious business career, Warren Buffett has offered thoughtful opinions on a wide variety of investment-related issues- executive compensation, accounting standards, high-yeild bongs, derivativse, stock options and so on. In regard to gold and its investment merits, however, Buffett has had little to say-at least in the pages of his annual shareholder letter. We searched through 34 years' worth of Berkshire Hathaway annual reports and were hard-pressed to find any mention of the subject whatsoever. The closest we came was a rueful acknowledgement from Buffett in early 1980 that Berkshire's book value, when expressed in gold bullion terms, had shown no increase from year-end 1964 to year-end 1979.
February 15, 2012 | For years Wall Street and the mutual fund industry have advanced the concept that investors should buy and hold. A common piece of evidence to support this recommendation is various versions of "Don't Miss the Ten Best," which show that missing just a small percentage of the market's best days dramatically reduces investor returns.
February 6, 2012 | Bob Rice, general managing partner with Tangent Capital Partners LLC, explains "Internal Rate Of Return (IRR)." (Source: Bloomberg)
January 18, 2012 | Matt Krantz of USA Today, writes in this article that it was well understood by many that the investment returns for government bonds were not to be as good as they have been, particularly in 2011. He asks, “When is this much-anticipated “great correction” coming?” Well, it didn’t happen in 2011. In fact, 2011 was a very good year to be holding bonds.
Gifts and Giving (By Daniel D. Joss)
May 9, 2012 | Last year, Gifts and Giving, Part 1, outlined various ways of gifting to family members. Please review that as you consider transferring wealth to other generations. Gifts to family members are never deductible for tax purposes. This article will focus on tax deductible gifts to qualified charitable organizations. I will define gift and charitable contributions, tell you how you can gift, explain how we facilitate gift transactions, and discuss the tax implications of gifting. American Heritage Dictionary defines a gift as something that is bestowed voluntarily and without compensation. This article focuses more specifically on the transfer of property, money or assets from one person to another while receiving nothing (or less than fair market value) in return