Retirement Watch Weekly
Closing the Door to Your Greatest Fraud Risk
Your greatest risk of being scammed or having your identity stolen might be one you don’t suspect. The big headlines are generated when information thieves access the databases of major retailers or other well-known businesses. But the headlines are behind the times. Medical records are the latest hot target of information thieves. A medical record […]
Four Strategies for Secure Retirement Income
William Baldwin of Forbes looked for ways to generate $40,000 annually for 25 years, taking very low risk. All the strategies work, though some are harder to implement than others. Of course, the costs vary. One point to consider is that there’s no inflation protection. Another point is that the cash flow isn’t all income […]
Higher Risk Not Equal to Higher Returns
We’ve covered this in the past, but there’s new research. A rule of thumb is that you have to take more risk to earn higher returns. It appears now that in stocks at least that’s not the case. In fact, the riskiest stocks, as measured by volatility, earn lower returns than average. One explanation could […]
Dissecting The Shiller P-E Conundrum
Longtime readers of Retirement Watch are familiar with Hussman Strategic Growth and its fall from grace. The fund had a great record prior to the 2008 financial crisis. Since the recovery began in 2009, the fund’s continued to hedge its portfolio, selling short stock index futures as stock indexes rose to record levels. The fund’s […]
More on the Global Asset Portfolio
Last Friday I linked to an article from Cullen Roche arguing that investors shouldn’t be focused on the S&P 500 as a benchmark. Instead, they should focus on the global financial portfolio of assets. Now here’s someone else arguing much in the same vein. The Philosophical Economics blog takes a look at all the media […]
Beating the Stock Market
Here’s an interesting perspective on investing success from Cullen Roche of Pragmatic Capitalism. Roche makes a couple of unique points. One is that for a true passive investor, you shouldn’t be focused on “the market” represented by stock market indexes. You should be focused on all the financial assets out there. He argues that a […]
Rethinking Aging
Things improve and life gets better as we age, according to new research cited in The Wall Street Journal. (Subscription might be required.) In addition to higher life satisfaction, many older people are able to use knowledge and certain types of intelligence to offset the age-related cognitive decline. The stereotypical older person who is grumpy, […]
A Case for Retiring Later
People are living longer and saving less, so the longtime retirement age of 65 isn’t practical, according to Alicia Munnell of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. She has a new book coming out on the subject and recently did an interview with Morningstar.com to discuss the book. Morningstar: So, is the problem […]
