...so goes the year.

This theory suggests that the price movement of the S&P 500 during the month of January may signal whether that index will rise or fall during the remainder of the year. In other words, if the return of the S&P 500 in January is negative, this would supposedly foreshadow a fall for the stock market for the remainder of the year, and vice versa if returns in January are positive.

By now, you’ve probably heard the news: Your own behavioral biases are often the greatest threat to your financial well-being. As investors, we leap before we look. We stay when we should go. We cringe at the very risks that are expected to generate our greatest rewards. All the while, we rush into nearly every move, only to fret and regret them long after the deed is done. 

If you enjoy fine literature, we recommend all of Warren Buffett’s annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters. His 2016 letter was no exception, including this powerful insight about market downturns: “During such scary periods, you should never forget two things: First, widespread fear is your friend as an investor, because it serves up bargain purchases. Second, personal fear is your enemy.”

They are probably a close friend, a member of your church or club, a neighbor, or even a relative. You feel comfortable taking their advice because they seem more knowledgeable than you and they are “such a nice person.” Who can blame you for feeling that your financial advisor (an undefined and wholly unregulated term) is a trusted member of your “team” of counselors?

Since nearly every media outlet on the planet reported the news, you probably already know that the Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 20,000 for the first time on January 25, 2017. But when a popular index like the Dow is on a tear, up or down, what does it really mean to you and your investments? Let's explore some of the ins and outs of indexes and the index funds that track them. 

Before the 1960s, very few people invested (about 11% of the population in 1959). Most of those speculated in the stock market. Buying stocks was and is more like gambling than real investing, as individual companies can – and have – gone bankrupt; losing stockholders everything they invested.

For many years, Scott Burns wrote a nationally syndicated financial column for the Dallas Morning News. Scott retired at the end of January, and his column was turned over to Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University. At first glance, the change seemed reasonable...

With over $4 trillion currently invested in “index-style” passive mutual funds, it appears that investors are beginning to realize that active investing doesn’t work well enough to justify its costs. But, how passive should you be?

Real investing requires investors to adopt a patient, long-term approach to capturing the market’s expected returns. In industry parlance, some have categorized this approach as “passive,” versus active attempts to beat the market. We prefer to think of it as science-based or evidence-based investing. 

So much of investing is beyond our control (picking stock prices, timing market movements and so on), it’s nice to know that there are still a number of “power tools” we can employ to potentially enhance your bottom line. Tax-loss harvesting is one such instrument … although the tool analogy holds true in a couple of other ways: It’s best used skillfully, and only when it is the right tool for the task. 

Today’s investment choices are huge, too huge. Which means that, in addition to the difficulty of saving, you have the confusion of too many confusing choices. Let me simply the process ofbeginning to build the wealth you’ll need to retire comfortably. 

Many individual investors just play the market, and their results reflect it. If you are ready to stop playing and maximize your returns, then there are ten key things you need to understand, accept and follow to become a real investor.

In the face of political drama at home and abroad, it’s certainly been a summer for trying our patience, hasn’t it? For anyone who has ever been a parent or a child – that is, for everyone – there are several comparisons we can draw between good parenting and good wealth management. For both, plenty of patience is one of the most important qualities to embrace.

To help reduce the expected costs of funding future college expenses, parents can invest in assets that are expected to grow their savings at a rate of return that outpaces inflation. By doing this, college expenses may ultimately be funded with fewer dollars saved. Because these higher rates of return come with the risk of capital loss, this approach should make use of a robust risk management framework.

Just as the natural world around us comes from the elements found in the periodic table of elements, capital markets are made up of asset classes, broadly organized into stocks, bonds, and hard assets like commodities and real estate. As elemental as asset classes are to investing, it often makes sense to include some real estate investments in your globally diversified portfolio

In the coming weeks, investors are likely to be bombarded with predictions about what the future, and specifically the next year, may hold for their portfolios. These outlooks are typically accompanied by recommended investment strategies and actions that are aimed at trying to avoid the next crisis or missing out on the next “great” opportunity.

Active mutual fund managers continue performing badly, and they’re running out of excuses for their underperformance. Maybe they don’t have one.

When University of Chicago professor Eugene Fama says that Wall Street comes out with something like a new product per week, he’s not too far off. Most of the latest artfully designed investment products are not intended to help you as much as they are designed to help the sellers.