Turmoil in mega-caps like Apple Inc. is stirring investor anxiety. But for professional stock pickers, it’s mostly good news when the market’s biggest companies loosen their grip.
It’s tempting these days for some investors to question the role of fixed income in portfolios. After all, real yields have plunged, potentially leading to less income today and smaller capital gains tomorrow.
Quantitative investment firm Dimensional Fund Advisors is already making waves in the $5.9 trillion exchange-traded fund market.
On October 2, 2019 brokerage firm Charles Schwab announced they were no longer going to charge commissions on stock and ETF trades. Before the day closed E-Trade and TD Ameritrade followed suit. And just like that, commissions were dead.
This is a new type of exchange-traded ETF that is built differently from a traditional ETF.
I don’t say this often, but Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is wrong. Regular readers of our investor letters and other publications will recall that we regularly cite Chairman Powell as doing the best he can with the levers he has while arguing correctly for others to do their part.
When companies take positive ESG steps, they attract asset flows from fund managers, according to new research. But the price spikes from those flows may not result in outperformance for long-term investors.
2021 has certainly started off interesting. From Reddit readers chasing the most heavily shorted stocks, to the new Administration discussing more stimulus, investors have had plenty to deal with. A market review seems appropriate as the bulls seem to remain bulletproof even as the mania grows.
Treasury yields continued to march higher in January, with the move again concentrated in longer maturities. Mortgage spreads tightened slightly, while corporate bond spreads were mostly mixed. The market remains stuck between the push/pull of the prospect for greater fiscal stimulus and ongoing vaccine rollout versus continued lockdowns and the greatest one-month mortality rate since the pandemic began nearly a year ago.
While your chances of winning an argument on any given topic are slim, there’s one situation where it’s non-existent. That’s when you’re confronted with a high-conflict personality.
Collateralized loan obligations are the largest source of demand in the loan market. Cheryl Stober breaks down some key drivers of CLO manager behavior.
The explosive rally in GameStop, pitting retail investors against hedge funds, has renewed calls to ban short selling. But new research shows how valuable short sellers are to the efficient functioning of markets.
The rationale behind the meteoric rise of Gamestop, a chain of videogame rental stores, and AMC, one of the nation’s largest cinema operators, is too unlikely to be believed. In just one month both stocks had risen by more than 600%.
Bank loans offer some of the highest yields in the current interest rate environment. We believe their unique characteristics may prevent many investors from considering them, but it may be a mistake to overlook them.
Inflation will likely heat up in the coming months, but not to worrying levels.
For all Millennial readers, if you visited a casino in your lifetime only to see your money quickly disappear, you have not seen anything compared to trading versus professionals. So to all you Robinhood traders I say, “Welcome to the Jungle.”
Heading into 2021, advisors face numerous headwinds: a potential return of inflation, sky high equity prices, possible negative returns on bonds. Yet advisors with retail clients have few good options to protect against these risks, and many that embraced alternative mutual funds and ETFs have been disappointed with low returns, high fees and large drawdowns.
The questions advisors are asking today is:
How can retail investors gain exposure to leading hedge funds yet with the client-friendly features of an ETF? Given the difficulties for many hedge funds in the 2010s, will hedge funds will return to the Golden Age of the 2000s, when they generated alpha through two bear markets?
The decade-long onslaught inflicted by growth stocks on value investors is due to end, according to Gerard O’Reilly. But the data is too “noisy” for him to say when that will happen.
There is no easy answer for income investors whose expectations and behaviors need to be adjusted accordingly.
You can take active steps to protect your practice, clients, and employees by following this checklist.
"There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch," my grandpa once told me. The adage suggesting you can't get something for nothing seems to have bitten millions of unwitting investors who used a popular trading platform, Robinhood.
2021 market outlook from BlackRock's municipal bond team.
In his forecast for 2021, Jeffrey Gundlach predicted a “regime change.” Investors should prepare for themes that reverse prior trends: U.S. equities will underperform the rest of the world, inflation will rise, volatility will be higher, and the dollar will weaken.
This is the second in my series about what I’d like to see more and less of in 2021.
LIBOR is still being retired, just a little later than initially expected.
Advisors still don't trust annuities. But rejecting them as unsafe is a misguided disservice to clients who would benefit from the financial solutions they provide.
The performance of ESG funds has been unimpressive, according to new research, and the occasional outperformance is driven mainly by funds’ expenses, exposures to certain industries and factors.
Half of Americans aren’t saving enough for retirement. Blame for this problem is usually pinned on some combination of low wages or irresponsible choices, but there’s another culprit: an expensive and antiquated 401(k) system. Reforming it could put billions more dollars into savers’ pockets.
How can credit markets help active investors achieve their goals in the present low yield environment? Here are 5 ideas.
There is strong demand for steady income. However, most investment products and strategies fail dismally in this regard.
We hope you enjoy the December NewsLetter from Harold Evensky.
Here are a few ways to leverage video communication, like Zoom, so that it works to your advantage…
A new breed of exchange-traded funds that hide their holdings has been slow to win over fans this year. That may change in 2021.
Given their small size, narrow focus and high degree of specialization, it is reasonable to expect that active sector funds generate alpha. New research shows this is the case – but with a lot of caveats.
This mass exodus of breakaway brokers hasn’t happened, much to the chagrin of us prognosticators, and I know why.
With Tesla Inc. about to be added to the S&P 500, people have wondered where index-tracking mutual funds will find the $80 billion of stock they’ll need to own in Elon Musk’s car-maker. Now they know: at least some of it will come from Elon Musk’s car-maker.
Given all the municipal bonds to choose from, how do you decide which ones should make up the core of your portfolio? With $3.7 trillion of muni debt outstanding1 spread among tens of thousands of issuers, the choice may seem daunting, but we’ll help you break it down.
In the year 2020, lower coupon bonds are cannibalizing higher coupon bonds.
As Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen is almost certain to pursue tighter coordination with the U.S. Federal Reserve next year -- repairing recent frictions -- though observers say she will be careful to avoid any specific move that could trigger a wave of Republican protests.
When we explore the specifics of an advisor’s business, there are commonly asked questions around the nuances between the SEC and FINRA.
Fair trade over free trade will remain the theme in Washington.
There is new reform legislation making its way through Congress which will significantly affect how many of us save for retirement and specifically how, and how much, we can contribute to our retirement accounts and at what ages. This is the most significant retirement saving reform legislation in years. I’ll break it all down for you below.
Defined outcome ETFs have quickly gathered almost $5 billion in assets; Not unexpected given their much lower drawdowns when the market crashed in March 2020; However, they are complex and expensive products and there are viable alternatives.
This is the fifth and last blog in our 2020 series, discussing why Russell Investments believes in the value of advisors. Here we discuss tax-smart planning and investing.
Municipals posted modestly negative total returns in October, with the S&P Municipal Bond Index finishing the month down -0.14%. Interest rates moved higher as economic data remained firm...
Municipal bond defaults have been rising, but investor demand remains robust. This incongruence may suggest the municipal market is behaving irrationally, but we don't think that's the case.
Evidence from the field of behavioral finance suggests investors can’t handle the truth – many delude themselves about their own skills and performance. The ability to delude oneself leads to persistent and costly investment mistakes.
Reflecting on the post-election landscape, Jeffrey Gundlach expects a split government to emerge, with a Biden presidency, Democratic House and Republican Senate. That outcome explains the gains in U.S. equities this week, but stocks are now “really overvalued.”
Illinois voters defeated a measure that would have allowed the state to raise taxes on its wealthiest residents, striking down a pillar of Governor J.B. Pritzker’s plan for shoring up the state’s finances and preventing its debt from being cut to junk.
Paying for qualified prospects from lead-generation services, can be profitable provided that the proper processes are in place to capture, follow up with, and nurture new opportunities.
