Will Future Returns Be Lower?

Will Future Returns Be Lower?

John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard Group Inc., said in a recent interview with Bloomberg Radio that he expects stock and bond returns to be significantly lower than they’ve been throughout his 87 year lifetime. Historically, according to Bogle, the average annual return for stocks has been about 12%, and for bonds it’s been around…
Read more

Should You Avoid Bonds Right Now?

Oksana Aronov, a managing director at JPMorgan Chase, is recommending against investing in U.S. Treasuries right now, according to Bloomberg News.  Although the ten-year Treasury note is currently yielding 1.58% (at a time when equivalent Japanese and European Central Bank sovereign bonds have negative yields), its real yield (i.e. the yield after factoring in inflation)…
Read more

Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword

The Orlando Sentinel reported that the Walt Disney Company retirement plan committee is facing a class-action lawsuit for offering the Sequoia Fund in its portfolio of investment choices for employees.  Why?  Because Sequoia lost 7.3% last year and is down over 13% this year, mostly due to one bad investment: Valeant Pharmaceuticals.  Over the last…
Read more

Five Steps To Avoid Investment Advisor Fraud

This blog was prompted by an article in the SJ Mercury News reporting that Jake Peavy, the San Francisco Giants pitcher, had been defrauded out of more than $15M by Ash Narayan, a financial advisor with RGT Capital Management in Irvine, CA. According to the SEC lawsuit, Narayan had fraudulently shifted $33M from client accounts…
Read more

Be Calm When Markets Are Not

Today’s unexpected vote by U.K. citizens to exit the European Union (EU) has resulted in stock market turmoil worldwide.  Unsurprisingly European stocks have taken a beating.  U.K. stocks dropped over 3%, German stocks over 6%, and in France the CAC-40 plunged over 8%.  Even the Japanese Nikkei fell over 7%, its worst single-day performance in…
Read more

The Worst Mutual Fund In History

If you were holding an S&P 500 mutual fund in 2008 that dropped 37%, you’d likely feel that your fund should go down in history as one of the worst ever. But in reality the fund didn’t do anything wrong except to invest in a part of the market that happened to experience a calamitous…
Read more