A petty fight broke out this week between Charles Schwab, Wealthfront, and Betterment over whose cash was better. The issue came about when Schwab opened its own free robo-advisor platform of automated portfolios with a small cash allocation. I guess Wealthfront and Betterment figured the best way to combat this is to make “free” look like a bad thing.
It was only a matter of time before the bigger brokerages offered a competing service. What’s funny is all three services basically have cash allocations to some degree. Hell, every brokerage account does. Continue Reading…
What happens when you combine a six year bull market in stocks with low interest rates and a persistent view the Fed will raise rates soon? You get a lot of speculation that stocks and bonds might both fall in value. The big concern lately is how will investors react if stocks fall and see the bond portion of their portfolio fall too.
It’s safe to say Buffett and Munger came through, as usual, with a wealth of information in this year’s Berkshire letter. Before I break down the letter into the many select quotes and lessons, there is a greater lesson throughout.
Dividend investing seemed to get more popular after the financial crisis. Not that investors didn’t want dividends before then, but a good crisis can make investors rethink and change their strategy. In hindsight, the trend toward dividends makes sense. But why?