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Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.
This week kicked off with the Nobel Prize in Economics being award to three economists, Fama, Shiller, and Hansen, each with differing views on market theory. This Bloomberg article sums up best what each has brought to the efficient market table. Continue Reading…
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Even though ETFs are all the rage, mutual funds and low-cost index funds are still the investment of choice for most investors. With tens of thousands of funds to choose from, building a solid portfolio isn’t easy. That’s where a mutual fund screener comes in handy.
Like any great stock screener, a good fund screener narrows down your choices by filtering through different criteria to find the funds that meet your goals. Once you have a small list to choose from researching each one should be easy too.
Since mutual funds are built for most investors, the best mutual fund screener should be too. It should be easy to use and understand. You shouldn’t need a manual for a simple screen by category, asset class, and cost. Once you have the results, the site should have all the fund information you need to make an informed decision before investing. The best part is, all the screening tools below do that and each one is free. Continue Reading…
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Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.
Twitter announced its IPO plans recently. I have no idea if it’s a good investment and probably won’t waste much time trying to find out. Probably, because we’re about a month away from the IPO day. A mistake in an early draft of the S-1 would put the IPO on Nov. 15.
Between now and then, the news media will bombard us with IPO headlines. The New York Times kicked it off with this rather good article about how Twitter came about. Continue Reading…
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The writing has been on the wall for a while about rising interest rates. This year, we saw exactly what this move does to bond funds, as rates rise, the price of bonds fall and the value of bond funds fall with it. One way around this is to own individual bonds (I’ve highlighted others like floating rate bond funds). A target maturity bond ETF might be another option.
One of the benefits of owning an individual bond is the fact it has a maturity date. It’s an end date. The bond matures and you get your money back. That doesn’t exist with a bond fund. Of course, when you own individual bonds you lose the diversification a bond fund offers. But what if you could combine the two? Well, a target maturity bond ETF brings a maturity date to a diversified bond fund.
A target maturity bond ETF holds a basket of bonds that mature in the same year. Once the bonds in the fund mature, the fund is closed, and you are paid out. Continue Reading…
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It’s not hard to find decent investment tools online these days. The internet has made it cheaper and easier to get financial information.
Not too long ago, you had to subscribe to the major financial news services like the Wall Street Journal and Standard & Poor’s (which were costly) or hope your local library had a subscription.
Trust me, spending hours or days digging through the S&P annual volumes was not fun. Now, you’re a mouse click away with the tools online. The free investing tools below make it easier to get the information that matters so you can spend the rest of your free time doing what you want.
Below are some free investment tools I use to simplify things or check the full list of financial tools I use.
There are a number of great sites out there but none of them can unseat this old school favorite for quotes, charts, information, and news. Why? Because Yahoo has always been a great news aggregator. On top of that, it offers watch lists, screeners, calculators, and has built a stable of original video programs that cover the gamut of financial topics. Continue Reading…
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Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.
There’s nothing like a self-inflicted shutdown to stir things up. On Oct. 1, the government was shutdown for the first time since 1996. In the process, all nonessential government workers were sent home without pay until this is resolved. Though, maybe the essential workers should be sent home. When you can’t stop a shutdown, how essential are you.
This is all due to a spending bill that Congress can’t agree upon. Oh, and something about that Obamacare thing too. Seems a few people in Congress still don’t like Obamacare. Mostly, it’s the Republicans. So their holding the spending bill hostage and will try to use the debt ceiling which needs to be dealt with in two weeks, to further their cause. Continue Reading…