A shorter version of this article appeared in the April 25, 2017 issue of Forbes. It’s spring: Corporate proxies are in the mail. Are these a noble exercise in shareholder democracy? Or an expensive farce? If you own corporate shares directly, your mailbox will soon fill up with ballots for directors and auditors. Should you

Part of the financial center in Moscow. The equity markets took a slight hit on Wednesday following… [+] news that the EU would be extending its sectoral sanctions for the rest of the year…and then some. (Photo by Kenneth Rapoza/FORBES) Sorry Market Vectors Russia (RSX) ETF holders, the Russian sanctions we all hoped would be

Crisis often means opportunity when it comes to stocks. Echoing Warren Buffett, when there’s widespread uncertainty, it often means it’s a good time to buy. Many high-quality stocks that had nothing to do with Brexit got pummeled in the wake of the UK vote to leave the European Union. They are worth considering — even as

Investors should not buy any financials ETFs or mutual funds because none get an attractive-or-better rating in my Sector Rankings for ETFs and Mutual Funds report. I assess ETFs and mutual funds based on the quality of their holdings, first and foremost, because holdings determine the performance of the fund, not just the costs or the past

Russia investors aren’t going to get any near-term relief from oil prices. Following a short spike in oil in recent weeks, crude is expected to get cheaper in the days ahead, Barclays Capital said in a report released on Monday. Falling oil prices is bad for Russia day traders, who have been buying and selling

Although understanding how a 401(k) works and how much it costs is challenging, how to save is not. There are some streamlined ways to save more and build a better nest egg. Although you’re shackled to your employer for a retirement plan — unless you have your own IRAs — you have to go with

The Iraqi Dinar revaluation scam has entered a new phase while untold thousands continue to hold onto the troubled currency. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently filed a complaint against Joshua Jay Hansen, 34, of Logan Utah, for attempting to swindle investors in a dinar scheme. Hansen allegedly was offering securities that invested

The S&P 500 recently made an all-time high in spite of sluggish U.S. and global economic growth. John Archer says this combination is a recipe for trouble so he is raising cash to reduce his exposure to the market. John started his Marketocracy fund a little more than 2 years ago, but in 2015, just

Now that the year is behind us and we have some nice round numbers, it’s a good time to look back and understand how building an ETF portfolio really works. For this experiment, let’s use some widely held ETFs that track the major market benchmarks. The bottom line is simple: Taken in 12-month cycles, asset classes always

It has been a very, very cold few months, particularly in New England. Boston is buried in snow. Niagara Falls has frozen over. Even the South is getting hit with ice. What does this have to do with retirement investing? Everything. The thing is, despite the extreme cold in some parts of the country, we’re

A popular recent article in the New York Times suggested that Americans who aren’t saving enough for retirement can blame Wall Street’s high fees on investment products for their shortfall. We can’t dismiss our culpability entirely. The current national savings rate posted by the Federal Reserve hovers around 5%, not nearly enough to fund our

Most of us are holding too much cash in our portfolios and not enough stocks, but the worst offenders of all are the youngest investors. This means you, millennials. A 2014 UBS survey reports that the public continues to avoid the stock market, but that the youngest investors are even more conservative than the older

This is just not normal.  Nearly 90% of the industrialized world economy is presently anchored by zero rates, and half of all government bonds in the world today yield less than 1%. Wow. The race into risky assets continues, but those assets are bid up and richly priced. Evans Ambrose-Pritchard wrote, “Stephen King from HSBC

Updated rankings are out. Go to Best ETFs 2017: Long-term Bonds. In this category the iShares ETF family lands in the top spot for cost efficiency, with its 7-10 Year Treasury Bond fund (IEF), and in the lead for assets, with iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond (LQD). Long bonds offer some prospect of real

A lot of financial advisors like to talk about “insurance” for their clients’ investments. Often, however, this takes the unlikely form of highly risky counter-investments. For instance, an advisor might choose a broad selection of blue-chip stocks. They pay a nice dividend and, assuming they are not too tightly concentrated, are pretty safe from causing a

Many value investors underperformed as the market soared over the past several years, but the tables may soon turn for quality, large-cap, liquid stocks, Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research analysts said this week. “These days, value investing has been replaced by a preference for ‘growth at any price. But over the very long

The volatility of the past 2 weeks has Goldman Sachs, and many others, selling stocks. Sam Miklosko is on the other side of that trade. In order to execute a simple strategy of buying low and selling high, you have to buy when prices are low. That means that when the bears come out, it’s

Steven A. Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management has made a big bet on Square, the payments processing startup created by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. The over $11 billion family office for Cohen’s fortune disclosed on Friday it now owns nearly 6.7 million Square shares, or 5.4% of the company’s outstanding stock. Most of Point72’s investment in

Christian Magoon, the CEO of Amplify ETFs, has something new up his sleeve. The newcomer to the space (four years in now) is devising a strategy that will weed out some of what he calls the “zombie ETFs” in the market. Magoon started Amplify in April 2016, though he’s been in the ETF world for

President Trump is eyeing cutting the Social Security payroll tax. If not replaced by another funding source, the move could kill the most popular inflation-adjusted retirement program. While putting money in workers’ pockets in the short term, nixing the payroll tax will undercut funding for the popular program and achieve the sinister goal of GOP

There are basically three ways to make money in this bad ole world: you either inherit it, you sell a lot of something very expensive and do very well at it, or you take risks. Enterpreneurs take risks on new companies. Investors take risk on markets. So when a crisis in Brazil heats up, as

I wish I could say that the Equifax hack debacle was resolved and everyone’s personal data was protected. That’s not the case. It may be months or even years before we know what happened and who stole what. There’s little doubt that some 143 million Americans are at risk. The company performed poorly, had awful

By James Zdralek, Senior Usability Design Expert, SAP What if the world ran on new classes of digital currency that are inflation resistant, create price stability, discourage bubbles and deflationary spirals? What if they could protect citizen’s savings without reducing liquidity when they save rather than spend? Rapid change will continue due to ongoing digital transformation.

At long last, Brazil is back and it will blow Mexico away next year as a relatively safe bet for growth in 2018, analysts from Morgan Stanley suggested in a report dated Dec. 8. Mexico’s been doing quite well, thanks to the strong U.S. economy that it depends on for nearly all of its exports.

The U.S. stock market was up 8% in three weeks, which is a little under half of what the S&P 500 did all last year. January marked the 22nd of the last 23 months that the market was higher in total return. It’s almost impossible today to make a bear case for anything except for,

Watch Now Jon Maier, Chief Investment Officer, Global X sat down with Julie Cooling, Founder & CEO, RIA Channel to discuss their suite of income, thematic, country funds, and factor-based ETFs. Maier moved to Global X from Merrill Lynch to offer his experience and knowledge of ETF model portfolio management. As the due diligence manager and gatekeeper

When I started cold calling for prospects at the Dean Witter Reynolds office on 17th Street in Denver in the early 80s, the 30-year municipal bonds I was pitching yielded 14%+ tax-free — without checking, I believe this was substantially more than is paid these days. I’d passed the securities exam and had just returned

For some, moments like these on Wall Street were made for the risk takers. National economic advisor Larry Kudlow warned the Fed about an inverted yield curve and what it means for the economy: in short, it means recession. The Fed is hiking. The market is thinking the economy will slow, and that’s pushing Treasury

The believers are hanging on for dear life.  The bull market is in its 9th year as of March, when it hit 666 in intraday trade on March 6, 2009…and hasn’t looked back since. If this keeps up for another 12 months, it will be the longest running bull market in history. BlackRock Investment Institute,

Global markets were volatile again last week. Here are some of the major movers and indicators that investors should be watching. As you read through, note that the breakdown in historical relationships between different markets can be just as important as a new high or low in price or value. Gold & U.S. Real Yields