REIT Reality
One of the hottest investment classes last year was real estate. Not individual homes, but real estate investment trusts, known by their acronym; REITs. While the global stock market returned just over 3% in 2014, Vanguard's REIT Index fund made over 30%.
REITs were hot (notice the use of past tense), we have no idea how well they will do from here. Although we do believe that REITs should be a small part of a properly diversified portfolio. Just make sure you understand how they work and the risks associated with them. To that end, our good friend Paul Merriman recently published an informative piece at Marketwatch: