68% of shareholders want to replace Mark Zuckerberg as chairman of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB), but Mark Zuckerberg still holds the majority of voting shares (source: Facebook March 2019 Quarterly Report, page 54). As much talk as there is about Facebook’s role IN democracy, this is a reminder that the corporate structure of Facebook IS […]
While I am often asked “is now a good time to invest?” in both booming and declining economic times, I have recently been asked more and more about whether the economy is due for its first global recession since 2008-2009, and how to invest in preparation for the next recession. I recently wrote a short […]
The main reason to buy a stock is to get significantly more money out of it than you put into it. By “significantly more”, the profit you make from a stock should not only be more than interest you would have earned putting the same money into a bank deposit or bond, but also compensate […]
The mutual fund as we know it today is almost 100 years old, and following important steps in 1934 and 1940 and then in 1974, mutual funds can be thanked for helping a large percentage of average working individuals save trillions of dollars for retirement in ways pre 20th century history might not have imagined. […]
Bloomberg recently published another article titled “Where to Invest $1,000,000 right now“, where six different experts provided six different opinions on where they would invest the million. Not surprisingly, the experts they asked tended to recommend investing in assets their companies sold or serviced (for example, the one who said investing in Vietnamese property was […]
Just noticed my book “Invest Outside the Box” has finally appeared on Amazon with an available date of August 14th – looking forward to seeing it on shelves and on the desks of practitioners!
529 plans are one of the best US tax-advantaged vehicles for college savings. While 529 plans are sponsored by a US state, you do not need to be resident in a state to participate in that state’s 529 plans, nor will investing in a state’s 529 plan limit you to that state’s schools.  In […]
Many Americans living outside the US have visited their local bank to be told that they are not allowed to purchase investment products outside the US, often without being told any more details as to why not. While Americans can and should directly own investments outside the US (I personally own and buy for US […]
One of my favorite books is Ben Graham’s “The Intelligent Investor”. This page from the fourth revised edition (1973) gives a short but fascinating history of some amazing price swings in the not-too-obscure category of foreign government bonds, interesting in part because the government issuers aren’t around in the same form any more (Cuba had […]
Vanguard is synonymous with low-cost, passive investing. Here I present some charts showing some metrics that can be used to enhance an asset allocation of the top Vanguard mutual funds even among these broadly diversified, passive funds. Despite my disagreements with him, Jack Bogle remains one of the foundational figures of today’s investing world I […]