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Article Archive
2001
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| Good advice, or advice that sounds good? | ||
| 02/10/06 Permlink | Zweig | ||
| "In the short run, however, the best way to get ahead is to check your conscience at the door. Most readers, and all too many editors, want to hear about the newest, the hottest, the get-rich-quick schemes, the secret "keys to wealth" that have miraculously been overlooked or hidden by "the experts." Good advice easily gets drowned out by advice that just sounds good. In 1999, any journalist who peddled the sexy idea of putting all your money in tech stocks was hailed as a genius. At the same time, anyone who preached the sober gospel of caution was called a "moron," a "f--head" or an "ignorant a--hole." (That is a delicate selection from among the thousands of e-mails that criticized my online columns in 1999 and 2000.) When markets go mad, the responsible financial journalist has to stand as a voice of reason -- even though leaning against the wind isn't easy in a hurricane." | ||
| More articles on the same topic . . . | ||
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| So that's why | ||
| 06/21/10 Permlink | Zweig | ||
| "In other words, investors often go along with the crowd because - at the most basic biological level - conformity feels good. Moving in herds doesn't just give investors a sense of "safety in numbers." It also gives them pleasure. That may help explain why market sentiment can change so swiftly, why true contrarians are so hard to find and why investors care so much about the "consensus view" on Wall Street." | ||
| When the Global Debt Shuffle Hits Home | ||
| 05/09/10 Permlink | Debt Zweig | ||
| "The U.S. now has a heavier debt burden than several of the overleveraged countries that have been branded with the scornful nickname "the PIIGS." Portugal's debt, according to the IMF, is 85.9% of its GDP; Ireland's, 78.8%; Italy, 118.6%; Greece, 124.1%; Spain, 66.9%. Perhaps there should be a new acronym, with the U.S. added to Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain: "PIG IS U.S."" | ||
| Investors keep fooling themselves | ||
| 01/16/10 Permlink | Markets Zweig | ||
| "Historically, inflation has eaten away three percentage points of return a year. Investment expenses and taxes each have cut returns by roughly one to two percentage points a year. All told, those costs reduce annual returns by five to seven points. So, in order to earn 6% for clients after inflation, fees and taxes, these financial planners will somehow have to pick investments that generate 11% or 13% a year before costs. Where will they find such huge gains? Since 1926, according to Ibbotson Associates, U.S. stocks have earned an annual average of 9.8%. Their long-term, net-net-net return is under 4%. All other major assets earned even less. If, like most people, you mix in some bonds and cash, your net-net-net is likely to be more like 2%." | ||
| Will fees stop bugging investors? | ||
| 12/20/09 Permlink | Funds Zweig | ||
| "Don Phillips, managing director at Morningstar Inc., the fund researcher, argues that 12b-1 fees "are a farce, because they don't capture all the distribution costs." Some fund managers pay for marketing out of their management fees, for example. Mr. Phillips suggests that funds should overhaul their financial statements by sorting all expenses into three main buckets: "investment management," or what it costs to research and run the portfolio; "sales and marketing," or what it costs to distribute the fund; and "operations," or overhead like accounting and legal expenses." | ||
| A career spent finding value | ||
| 12/16/09 Permlink | Value Investing Funds Tweedy Zweig | ||
| "'He was something of a collector,' said analyst A. Michael Lipper of Lipper Advisory Services. 'It took a lot of disappointment for him to get rid of an underperforming stock. Could somebody else have produced better results by getting rid of the losers? One might think so, but it wasn't [Tweedy, Browne's] style.'" | ||
| The CEO may not change the company | ||
| 12/04/09 Permlink | Management Zweig | ||
| "How much of a difference should investors expect when General Motors - or any company - brings in a new chief executive? Not much." | ||
| Too late for the junk-bond party? | ||
| 11/29/09 Permlink | Bonds Zweig | ||
| "Baylor University finance professor William Reichenstein says that junk-bond returns mirror what you would get if you put two-thirds of the money in investment-grade bonds and one-sixth each in large-company stocks and small-company stocks - all of which you probably own already." | ||
| More stocks may not make a portfolio safer | ||
| 11/22/09 Permlink | Zweig | ||
| "As many studies have shown, at least 40% of the variability in returns can be reduced by moving from a single company to 20. Once a portfolio contains 20 or 30 stocks, adding more does little to damp the fluctuations in wealth over time. But this research on diversification was based on the average results of a large number of portfolios randomly generated by computer. Something entirely different happens when flesh-and-blood humans try to pile up stocks one at a time." | ||
| Using the lottery effect to make people save | ||
| 11/16/09 Permlink | Zweig | ||
| "Based on recent headlines, you might think that Americans are finally saving again. Want to bet? In 2007, the latest year for which final numbers are available, Americans spent $92.3 billion on legalized gambling, according to Christiansen Capital Advisors; that same year, says the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Americans saved only $57.4 billion." | ||
| Staying calm in a world of dark pools | ||
| 10/26/09 Permlink | Markets Zweig | ||
| "In 1976, the great financial analyst Benjamin Graham declared that "the stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each other's washing ... without rhyme or reason." Mr. Graham died that year, but today he would laugh at the speed of the spin cycle. He would then ignore the momentary vibrations in a company's stock price and go right back to analyzing the value of its business. As an investor, you are free to choose your own time horizon. If other people want to try earning a few fractions of a penny a few thousand times a day, you should wish them well -- and refuse to join them." | ||
| Don't let a market crash hit you | ||
| 10/11/09 Permlink | Markets Zweig | ||
| "Benjamin Graham -- Mr. Buffett's mentor -- advised splitting your money equally between stocks and bonds. Graham added that your stock proportion should never go below 25% (when you think stocks are expensive and bonds are cheap) or above 75% (when stocks seem cheap). Graham's rule remains a good starting point even today. If time turns out to be your enemy instead of your friend, you will be very glad to have some of your money elsewhere." | ||
| You've got blackmail | ||
| 07/02/09 Permlink | Crime Zweig | ||
| "My advice: If AOL comes after you, then go after AOL." | ||
| Take Benjamin Graham's advice | ||
| 05/23/09 Permlink | Behaviour Graham Zweig | ||
| "It is sometimes said that to be an intelligent investor, you must be unemotional. That isn't true; instead, you should be inversely emotional. Even after recent turbulence, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up roughly 30% since its low in March. It is natural for you to feel happy or relieved about that. But Benjamin Graham believed, instead, that you should train yourself to feel worried about such events." | ||
| Joe investor, the markets are all yours | ||
| 11/16/08 Permlink | Markets Zweig | ||
| "This is a huge change for the little guys. Rob Arnott, who oversees $35 billion at Research Affiliates LLC in Newport Beach, Calif., puts it this way: "The question that hardly anyone ever thinks about is: Who's on the other side of my trade, and why are they willing to be losers if I'm going to be a winner?" Ever since the 1970s, the person on the other side of your trade has almost always been someone who manages billions of dollars and has millions of dollars to spend on gathering more information than most individuals ever could. Now, however, as Mr. Arnott says, "You can -- and probably do -- have a counterparty on the other side of your trade who absolutely has to sell, perhaps at any price." You would be very wise to give these distressed sellers a little bit of your cash, which they overvalue, in exchange for some of the stocks and bonds that they are undervaluing." | ||
| Take a deep breath, calm yourself | ||
| 10/18/08 Permlink | Behaviour Zweig | ||
| "You can catch other people's emotions as easily as you can catch a cold. In an experiment by neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps at New York University, people either watched someone else get a mildly painful electric shock or suffered the shock themselves. Their brain responses and their dread before the shock were highly similar in both cases, suggesting that seeing another person's fear is all it takes to make us afraid. Even encountering the circumstances under which the other person was shocked is enough to trigger your own fear. Viewed this way, today's financial markets -- in which tens of millions of investors watch each other's fears unfolding in real time on television and online -- constitute one giant panic-transmission machine." | ||
| How to control your fears | ||
| 07/21/08 Permlink | Behaviour Zweig | ||
| "What goes on inside your head when your portfolio implodes? One of the fear centers in your brain, the amygdala, can respond to upsetting stimuli in 12 milliseconds, or one-25th the time it takes to blink your eye. These brain cells fire when an attack dog snarls at you, a spider drops down your shirt or the Dow Jones Industrial Average takes a dive." | ||
| Stop worrying, and learn to love the bear | ||
| 07/12/08 Permlink | Graham Buffett Zweig | ||
| "When you bought into the gospel of "stocks for the long run," did you have any idea how long the long run can turn out to be? Exactly 10 years ago, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock Index was at 1164; it closed Friday at 1239. That's an annualized average return of 0.63%. At that rate, it will take you 111 more years to double your money in the stock market." | ||
| How to lose $9 trillion in a bull market | ||
| 11/29/07 Permlink | Zweig | ||
| "Based on decades of data from 19 countries, Dichev thinks that the average investor incurs a "timing penalty" of 1.5 percentage points a year by buying high and selling low. Impatience will cost you dearly." | ||
| The way of the calm investor | ||
| 09/13/04 Permlink | Zweig | ||
| "If getting rich is supposed to make you feel good, why are so many investors so agitated so much of the time -- even when the market goes up?" | ||
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