Posts tagged as:

mutual funds

Middle Class: The Money Class? Part Two

July 29, 2010

Part one of our series on the Middle Class: The Money Class? can be found here. Who are you? The mutual fund industry has been asking that for decades and the answers still aren’t quite clear.  But they are getting closer to understanding that the vast majority (85%) of the owners of mutual funds are [...]

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Middle Class: The Money Class? Part One

July 28, 2010

According to the most recent Investment Company Institute Factbook, the fund industry, based on what they refer to as emergence of fund entrepreneurs have made the middle class the money class.  With 90 million households owning mutual funds, either in their 401(k)s or some other type of defined contribution plan available n the workplace or [...]

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The F in ETF Doesn’t Mean Free

July 25, 2010

Exchange Traded Funds or ETFs, those index funds that mimics those of the mutual fund world that trade openly on the stock exchange throughout the day have made investors who don’t use them wonder if they are missing something and those that do, want the F in ETF to stand for free. But they only [...]

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Mutual Funds: Dividend Growth vs Dividend Yield

July 16, 2010

As investors look for anything that might enhance their portfolio’s overall return, the subject of whether dividends are worth the effort have moved to the forefront.  Many current retirees and those poised to retire understand the nature of what this provides but there are subtle differences in what they actually are, the story they tell [...]

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Cash, in Pocket

July 9, 2010

The opening lyrics to James Honeyman-Scott and Chrissie Hynde’s song Brass in Pocket could easily be changed to: “I’ve got [cash], in pocket; got [money],I’m gonna use it”.  Only the cash in pocket has become the huge economic threat of this financial crisis – one that still lingers several years after the fact. We all know [...]

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Making the Financially Clueless More So

June 29, 2010

By now, most of my regular readers know what I do not like in the world of financial products. The annuity galls me (a mix of insurance and mutual funds that doesn’t do either well), the ETF (which mimics the indexed mutual fund but allows you to trade it just like a stock and pay [...]

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The Financial Croupier: Hidden 401K Fees

June 17, 2010

What would you do if you knew how much you were paying in fees to the retirement plan you use? Not the fees to the mutual funds you invest in. Those are, for the most part, your decision. Unless of course your 401(k) is not-so-good, stocked with mediocre funds or too many options. I’m talking [...]

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Are 401(k) Fee Disclosures Worth the Effort?

June 11, 2010

It may seem to be a simple enough argument. Give someone something inexpensive and they will buy more. But will such a concept work in a 401(k) and will investors simply become so fixated on the price of the funds they chose as to overlook the actual product itself? The Senate decided not to include [...]

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Tactical Asset Allocation: Mutual Funds that act like You

June 10, 2010

Mirror, mirror on the wall, can a mutual fund react like me? Not poetic but truthful; we all want a mutual fund that gets skittish when we get nervous, divests itself to cash when the market looks to be headed lower but gets back into the fray when the markets look to rebound and fails [...]

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Cautiously Optimistic: Investing under Fire

June 5, 2010

The past week is something that should have been a surprise. The Dow Jones Total Market Index lost about $480 billion in total worth in a single day (Friday 06.04.10, when it fell 323.31 points, or 3.2%, to 9931.97 – turns out, it was the second close below 10,000 in two weeks and the third-biggest [...]

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