Is Crowdfunding Safe for Investors?

Is Crowdfunding Safe for Investors?

The success of Twitter’s recent IPO was the culmination of a simplified IPO process aimed at making it easier for smaller companies to raise capital. Under the JOBS Act of 2012 a so-called Emerging Growth Company would be allowed to do the following: Submit a draft registration statement to the SEC for confidential nonpublic review…
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What Is Your Risk Tolerance?

If you have an investment account at a brokerage firm, chances are you’ve encountered a risk tolerance questionnaire.  Such a document purports to determine how comfortable you are with investment risk.  Questions range from the simple – “Are you investing primarily for income or for growth?” – to the sublime – “If you are offered…
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Should You Increase Equity Allocation in Retirement?

Conventional wisdom has it that young investors should allocate a large portion of their savings to stocks – a high return, high risk asset class – when they first start investing their savings, and then slowly reduce their stock allocation as they approach and then surpass retirement age.  By the time they reach their eighties,…
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Which Are Better: Mutual Funds or ETFs?

You’re probably familiar with mutual funds. They are arguably the most common type of investment choice for 401(k) and other retirement accounts. Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), by contrast, have only been around since the early 1990s, and have not yet found their way into very many retirement plan menus. But they are widely available for…
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Do You Feel Wealthy Again?

The Federal Reserve just released its quarterly financial accounts report. Household net worth – which includes Americans’ home values and savings, less liabilities such as mortgages and credit card debt – rose to $74.8 trillion. We are now, according to this measure, wealthier than at any point in history. And we’re $6.7 trillion wealthier than…
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Bond Funds Can Still Do Well When Rates Rise

As a follow up to a blog I wrote a few weeks ago (Do You Really Want to Sell Your Bonds Now?), I thought it would be a good idea to provide a little more data about how bond funds might be expected to perform during periods of rising rates. The following table was developed…
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