By understanding the impact of human behavior on investment returns and devising a disciplined Investment Policy Statement, DIY investors can overcome damaging behavioral forces and increase their chances of achieving success.
Existing Home Sales Chart
May 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment
The 10 Largest Actively Managed ETFs
May 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Most ETFs (exchange traded funds) are passively managed, which means they are essentially run by computers. They are designed to mimic an index. As a result, they are very cheap to set up and maintain. Investors benefit from the low costs. But Wall Street is trying to entice investors into paying more for actively managed ETFs. Here’s a list of the biggest ones.
Poor Timing Can Cut Your Returns In Half: Dalbar
May 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Research firm Dalbar studies the returns that individual investors actually achieve, and compares that to the returns that are offered by the market as a whole. The results are consistent year after year: investors only “capture” about two-thirds of the market returns. This article offers suggestions for dealing with poor market timing.
Commodity Price Chart
May 18, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Chart of the PowerShares DB Commodity Index Tracking Fund (ETF). This fund provides exposure to 14 commodities from four sectors: energy, agriculture, industrial metals, and precious metals. Many commodity funds weigh constituents by economic importance, resulting in a heavy energy overweighting, but DBC is well-diversified across commodity sectors, making it a true broad-basket commodity fund.
Volatility Weekly Chart
May 18, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Chart of the volatility of the stock market, as measured by the VIX index. VIX is often called the “fear guage” for stock market investors, because it tends to spike higher when there is bad news about the economy, or geopolitical events, or anything of significance that may cause stock markets to fall.
SP500 Weekly Chart
May 17, 2013 By 1 Comment
Initial Jobless Claims Chart
May 13, 2013 By 2 Comments
Chart of weekly claims for unemployment. This is one of the key components of the ZenInvestor Recession Watch model, which anticipates the start and end of economic downturns with a 6 month lead time. Weekly jobless claims by themselves are not a good predictor of stock market moves, but when they are combined with other key indicators such as the yield curve, capital investment, inflation, they are very informative.
What The Experts Are Predicting For The Stock Market
Widely followed stock market experts weigh in on their predictions about the current state of the stock market, and which way it is likely to go in the immediate future.