From the category archives:

Investing Education

An Interactive Look at the Markets Over the Past Decade

January 6, 2010

From The Financial Times: here’s a very useful and interactive look at the previous decade’s financial markets (stocks, bonds, and commodities) with highlights of all significant global events.
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What’s Next for ETFs? New Trends for the Coming Decade

December 20, 2009

The previous two decades have been an interesting journey for the Exchange Traded Fund.  A relatively humble beginning in the 1990’s as a simple way to track a few different indices soon gave way to a mass proliferation of products with ever-increasing complexity in the 2000’s.  Funds suddenly had every available sector, asset type, and geographic region covered and many have now adopted leverage, short sales, and even [...]

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2009 Third Quarter and Year-to-Date Asset Class Returns

October 6, 2009

Below I have listed the 2009 third quarter and year-to-date total returns for the iShares corresponding with various asset classes.
Risky assets (high volatility) continued to post extraordinarily high returns during the quarter. Foreign developed small cap rose 21.6%. Emerging markets increased 20.3% and U.S. high yield corporate bonds added 13.16%.
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Do You Fly Solo?

September 23, 2009

We think a lot about how we can better support individual investor needs and provide useful insights. Mark Clare at Valuecruncher (great service that let’s you toss your valuation spreadsheets aside) offers a market perspective and wrote an interesting piece that paints 4 potential scenarios for how the online financial industry as a whole plays [...]

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2009 Second Quarter and Year-to-Date Asset Class Returns

July 7, 2009

Below I have listed the 2009 second quarter and year-to-date total returns for the iShares corresponding with various asset classes.
Risky assets (high volatility) posted extraordinarily high returns during the quarter. Foreign developed small cap rose 34.3%. Emerging markets increased 31.57%. Foreign developed real estate gained 38.48% and U.S. high yield corporate bonds added 17.05%
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The Credit Crisis Explained (VIDEO)

February 22, 2009

Thanks to Jonathan Jarvis for sharing.
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Top Ten Books for the Financial Crisis

February 19, 2009

Amidst the great tsunami wave of new personal finance books on the market, it may become a little overwhelming in trying to gather appropriate reading on the financial crisis. I’d like to offer up a top ten list sans self help, but with particular relevance to the financial crisis and economic downturn.
Several of the books on [...]

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What the Bleep Do We Know About Stockpicking?

February 17, 2009

Back in the early 1990’s, Peter Lynch, former portfolio manager at Fidelity, popularized the concept of “invest in what you know”.  In his book, “One Up on Wall Street: How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market”, Lynch recounted stories of how outings to the local mall helped him identify [...]

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As Fears Continue to Rise, the Best Guide for Investing is Still Warren Buffett

February 13, 2009

There is no argument anymore. The U.S. and global economies are bad and getting worse. Although most assets have declined severely since the end of 2007, there is pervasive fear that they will fall much more. The bulls have turned into bears or gone into hiding.
Articles about catastrophic financial events like the failure of major [...]

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Will Obama’s Stimulus Plan Make Us Go Topless?

February 1, 2009

It’s well established that the way choices are framed often has an enormous impact on the decisions people make.
Last week, I met up with a couple friends of mine, Eric and Christian, for some drinks.  Christian brought along “Maren”, a girl he met at Burning Man during the much talked about “Critical T*ts” parade – [...]

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