DOD

Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Robert Shiller On Indexing

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Robert Shiller on what worries him about passive investing from CNBC. “The problem is that if you are talking about passive indexing, that is something that is really free-riding on other people’s work. So people say, ‘I’m not going to try to beat the market. The market is all-knowing.’ But how in the world can the market be all-knowing, if nobody is trying — well, not as many people — are trying to beat it? … The strength of this country was built on people who watched individual companies. They had opinions about them. All this talk of indexes, it’s a little bit diluting of our intellect. It becomes more of a game. It’s a chaotic system. It’s kind of … Read more

Boeing, Visa Top Dow Performers Thus Far in 2017

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Image Source: Ken Mist Two of our favorite ideas have been leading the pack. By Brian Nelson, CFA We don’t send newsletter notifications often. In fact, they are few and far between. But when we do highlight an idea for the newsletter portfolios, we want it to be a good one. On Friday, 24/7 Wall Street reported that Boeing (BA) had increased its lead as the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s (DIA) top performer during 2017, with the year-to-date mark reaching nearly 65%, as of the end of last week. If you recall, on January 26, we “added” the idea to the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio at $168.44, making it perhaps one of the best large-cap ideas highlighted anywhere during 2017. … Read more

The Wisdom of Oaktree’s Howard Marks

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Image Source: emmolos The latest memo from Oaktree’s Howard Marks here should be read and then read again. The section on passive investing is an absolute treasure. “Passive investing is done in vehicles that make no judgments about the soundness of companies and the fairness of prices.  More than $1 billion is flowing daily to “passive managers” (there’s an oxymoron for you) who buy regardless of price.  I’ve always viewed index funds as “freeloaders” who make use of the consensus decisions of active investors for free.  How comfortable can investors be these days, now that fewer and fewer active decisions are being made?” — Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital Financial Tech Services: ACIW, EPAY, FDC, FIS, FISV, FLT, GPN, MA, MELI, … Read more

Adviser Fees on Indexed Assets Can Eat Up Your Nest Egg?

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Indexing sounds like an easy way to track the market’s performance, but if your indexed assets are held in financial advisors’ accounts, it can come with a big cost: significant underperformance. Over 20 years, we estimate in this hypothetical example that the cumulative cost as a result of a 1% annual financial advisor fee on indexed assets can amount to as much as 66% of a saver’s initial investment — just for holding an index fund. Please be careful out there!

Systemic Risk in These Frothy Times

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Let’s talk about index investing, market valuations, and mention how a few ideas in the Best Ideas Newsletter are doing. By Brian Nelson, CFA For most investors during most parts of the economic cycle, index investing (VOO), or holding a broad basket of stocks that approximate the returns of a large market index may make a lot of sense. I have always said this from the very beginning: Individual stock selection is not for everyone. What may not be well-known, however, is that index funds have experienced multi-year periods of both outperformance and underperformance relative to actively-managed funds since the dawning of the very first index fund many decades ago. I’m worried that some investors today may not have this … Read more

Valuentum’s ETF Reports

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Image Source: GotCredit Welcome to Valuentum’s ETF coverage. If you’re new to the site, please be sure to access the stock reports and dividend reports as part of your membership. If you are looking for the archives to the Best Ideas Newsletter, they can be found here. The Dividend Growth Newsletter archives can be found here. The Exclusive and High Yield Dividend Newsletter have their own website with archives, the latter coming soon. To learn more about Valuentum’s ETF reports, please see  here . To request a report of an ETF we do not currently cover, please contact us. To access the relevant Valuentum reports for each major ETF category, please click on the respective link, “Click Here to Access Valuentum Report.” The links … Read more