Great articles don’t always get the readership they deserve. We’ve posted the 10 most-widely read articles for the past year here. Below are another 10 that you might have missed, but I believe merit reading:

1. Gundlach’s Top ETF Recommendation
   by Robert Huebscher 11/17/17
   
   The money to be made is in non-U.S. markets, according to Jeffrey Gundlach. For long-term investors, he recommends a specific ETF.
   
   
2. Taleb, the Barbell Portfolio and Safety-First Financial Planning
   by Michael Edesess 2/13/17
   
   The “barbell” portfolio has long been considered an investment strategy. Since his fame after the 2010 publication of the book The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb has often been associated with the strategy. Recent research illustrates the critical connection between the barbell, core-satellite portfolios and safety-first financial planning – and how advisors can improve on using standard deviation as a measure of risk.
   
   
3. As Seen on TV: Financial Products You Should Avoid – Ty J. Young
   by Robert Huebscher 1/23/17
   
   An ideal retirement product should provide steady, secure income and upside participation in the stock market. That’s why advertisements that promise performance that will be “up with the market and never down, forwards with your money and never backwards” are so tempting. That’s exactly what Ty J. Young claims in his advertisements. I’ll explain why investors should be extremely wary of the products his firm sells.
   
   
4. Were Fama and French Right about Value and Size? An Ex-Post Test
   by Larry Swedroe 2/27/17
   
   Fama and French’s 1992 seminal research, which identified the value and size factors, was met with skepticism. Even the authors questioned the underlying economic rationale for their findings. With a quarter century of data, let’s look back and see if the skepticism was justified. Have value and small-cap outperformed?
   
   
5. Is a Total Market Fund the Most Diversified Portfolio?
   by Larry Swedroe 1/30/17
   
   Diversification has been called the only free lunch in investing. Many investors consider total-market funds, such as Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX), to be not only the most efficient (based on modern financial theory and, specifically, the efficient markets hypothesis) but also the most diversified. Leaving aside the question of whether Vanguard’s fund is the most efficient portfolio, let’s evaluate whether it’s the most diversified.
   
   
6. The Myths and Fallacies about Diversified Portfolios
   by Michael Edesess 1/9/17
   
   For many years “alpha” – outperformance of the market on a risk-adjusted basis – was the Holy Grail of investment. Almost all money managers claimed they could produce it. It turned out that few could. Now a new Holy Grail: diversification. But there is little agreement as to what it means.
   
   
7. Coping with Sequence Risk: How Variable Withdrawal and Annuitization Improve Retirement Outcomes
   by Joe Tomlinson 9/25/17
   
   A strategy that combines variable withdrawals with partial annuitization using a single-premium immediate annuity maximizes the cash available for consumption.
   
   
8. What Advisors Need to Know About Cryptocurrencies
   by Michael Edesess 7/3/17
   
   You may have heard about bitcoin. Spurred on by breathtaking price runups, some clients may even have asked you if they should invest in them, or if it’s safe to buy them and use them to make payments. Most likely you dismissed the whole thing as some sort of a tulip bubble. But it’s not as simple as that.
   
   
9. B.I.C.E.: Financial Advisors Beware
   by Ron A. Rhoades, JD, CFP® 1/9/17
   
   I question why any financial advisor would want to use B.I.C.E., given the likelihood of significant reputational damage that would result for the advisor.
   
   
10. The Best Fund Managers – As Voted by their Peers
    by Bob Veres 5/22/17
    
    Today’s indexing mania is driving the marketing people at the best active fund complexes completely crazy, but the top portfolio managers – that is, the people who really, truly enjoy investing – are seeing a lot of new opportunities.
    
    

Read more articles by Robert Huebscher