As Chuck Klosterman writes in his book IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Minds, the phrase ‘guilty pleasure’ is culturally backwards. As he can take pride in his watching the Ashley Simpson Show, I can admit to the my audience that I’ve watched every episode of Jersey Shore. I was born in Boston and raised in Rhode Island; to be truthful, I could field a pretty decent cast for a new season. I must say, for the record, an article in CNN Money made me respect the entrepreneurial spirit of the cast of the Jersey Shore.
Read the rest of this entry »How Does Your 401(k) Stack Up?
On August - 18 - 2009
Do you get a match? What’s the average management fee on your fund choices? Does your plan have all of the necessary asset classes? If you’ve got a 401(k) at work, no doubt you’ve been pressured to sign up (or automatically enrolled). How does your 401(k) stack up?
Read the rest of this entry »Transparency is Good!
On August - 16 - 2009
“Finance is the art of passing money from hand to hand until it finally disappears.” – Robert W. Sarnoff.
From the “it’s about time” category, I present the Supreme Court case Jones v. Harris Associates. The case was filed because a group of investors felt:
1. The board of directors wasn’t sufficiently neutral (the law requires 40% of advisors to be “disinterested”).
2. The fund didn’t disclose the advisers’ financial links to the trustees
3. Compensation for the adviser should be controlled by a majority of the disinterested advisers
As Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal writes, the Supreme court has no business setting fees. However, the disclosure rules on mutual funds stem from older laws. Is it time for reform in fund disclosure?
Read the rest of this entry »For Whom The Bell Tolls
On July - 19 - 2009
The way the financial community seems to be covering it, we are currently attending the funeral of Asset Allocation. Long live Asset Allocation!
A common topic on financial pages world wide web wide (a cheer for alliteration?) is about the supposed death of asset allocation. Asset Allocation is the idea that the best retirement play for most investors is to allocate financial resources among a number of investment baskets. Supposedly by spreading one’s investments across a diverse set of asset classes it is possible to catch the hot performance in any corner of the market while absorbing any shocks in other corners. Of course, the uninspiring performance of asset classes during the ‘Great Recession’ seem to throw this theory into question. Read on and decide for yourself if we need to find some pallbearers for this financial heavyweight.
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