How To Avoid Becoming Rich

How To Avoid Becoming Rich

We’ve all heard the stories about the Silicon Valley barber who became a millionaire by listening to and investing in the companies of the executives whose hair he cut.  Or about the thousands of employees during the early days at Microsoft who became millionaires simply by accumulating their stock options as the company’s stock price…
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Is Now The Time To Sell My Investments?

This is a question I get quite frequently from clients, friends, relatives, and even strangers that I meet at seminars. When I inquire as to what prompted such a question, the responses run the gamut from “I read that stocks are overpriced right now” to “The loud-talking guy on TV said so.”   In this post…
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What Is Your Advisor Really Costing You?

In a recent article in Morningstar, John Rekenthaler talked about how Ameriprise and other brokerages/custodians/advisors offer funds based on how much revenue they get from the fund companies.  These so-called revenue-sharing agreements, he argues, are a way for the brokerages to hide the income they are actually earning from the advice they are providing to…
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What’s The Real Risk In Your Portfolio?

Risk is a commonly used term when it comes to investing, and its importance cannot be overstated. While we cannot control the returns that we get from our investments, we can and should manage the risk very carefully.  As I have written before (Don’t Overlook the Risk of your Investments), there are many different types…
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Is Positive Asset Correlation A Problem?

An article with the provocative title “Why 60/40 Portfolios Are Downright Dangerous Today” caught my eye the other day.  It was in a financial planning trade publication targeted to financial advisors and asserted the following: Bonds and stocks used to be negatively correlated with each other but no longer are. Advisors are not making enough…
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Investment Keywords To Watch Out For

What prompted the writing of this post was a radio commercial I heard the other morning while commuting to work.  It was from some real estate firm that promised to teach me how to buy, hold, and sell properties with no money down and no risk.  Imagine that: no risk!  How could anyone turn down…
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