Easy Change

 In recent weeks my circumstances have changed with my retirement account and the bulk of my retirement savings is in a self-directed rollover IRA. I am able now to look and invest more broadly. This has caused me to be more and more interested in mutual fund alternatives like ETFs.  ETFs are Exchange-Traded Funds which are a newer investment vehicle that are traded on the open market during the day with most mainstream brokerages and you're able to know the going price during the day instead of waiting for the close of market to have the mutual funds be priced. Also, whereas traditional mutual funds often have a fee in order to get in, many of the ETFs have no load and also very low expenses.  Impact to the Market I've followed Consuelo Mack WealthTrack for some time. This week's guest is a longtime expert in the industry and while he previously has favored mutual funds, in particular index funds, he now believes that their days are numbered.  Indeed, Morningstar ...

 There's a big series of controversies these days with covid. And politics has not been a simple matter to stay out of. Many people have had enough. Benz puts all of this aside quite nicely in this video with Consuelo Mack this week. The full video here but I will highlight a few interesting points that I think are worth considering.  Starting with the numbers, Benz notes that there are 20.6 million job losses and a 14.7 million US unemployment rate. So, there continues to be real impact to large numbers of people in the economy. And the pandemic rages on: 20.7 million US covid cases .  When it comes to investment choices, Consuelo continues to bring up There Is No Alternative. More than a catchy acronym, the idea that people are searching for yield is a concept that might be driving stocks to ever higher prices. Benz dodges this well, and generally does a good job of providing advice which is applicable regardless of what your investments are in.  One key departure...

Wealthtrack remains one of the most fascinating and enjoyable shows out there for financial topics. Consuelo Mack continues to host this show with a variety of guests ranging from the practical experts on retirement like Erin Botsford and Mary Beth Franklin to more bookish and technical guests like Donald Yacktman and Cliff Asness who have 'been there, done that' with respect to investing large sums of money for their clients. This week was interesting because for one of the few times I've seen on the show Consuelo took a personal turn with her guest, Erin Botsford. She described a scenario when Erin was young where she was involved in an accident and was subsequently involved in a lawsuit as a result of a death in the accident. Being very young at the time, this sounded like a terribly challenging event for Erin (it was made clear that she was not at fault during the episode). This tragic story turned to news you can use: get umbrella insurance for your house and your...

For those of you who follow this blog you will know that I have long been a fan of the show Consuelo Mack: Wealthtrack. This morning, with my dog on my lap, I decided to clear out some recent episodes off of my DVR. I thought that the show was interesting and it was also somewhat surprising how much more I noticed about each of the guests as I was working on getting the ideas of the guests and the shows all at once when I was just trying to get through the episodes. I generally think that Saturday is a good time for me to watch these shows and I think that this is one of the most interesting things I can watch that will not be too much for me to work on in terms of actual work -- something that I really strive to avoid on my weekends where possible since there is enough of that during the week -- and also something that makes me very interested and engaged but at the same time is relaxing. It sounds strange but listening to the show and also reading and writing about money more gene...

This morning I watched WealthTrack with Matt Mclellan, who is now running several First Eagle funds, including the global funds which has some amazing records for the trailing periods. He provided some new ideas that were very compelling for me...but the main idea that I like was this: The real risk is not investing because there are no real risk free assets. This, simply put, is that with the real inflation numbers taken into account, preservation of capital is impossible, Mclellan states, unless you invest. Put simply, the challenge and fear for most individual investors is that there is entirely too much volatility in the markets. Looking at a good overall measure of volatility in the market, the VIX as a component of certain ETNs, you can look at this as an example: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSEARCA%3AVXX In the end, McLellan argues, you must construct your portfolio from good individual businesses.

As you might have noticed, I left a mutual fund ticker as a teaser at the end of my one of my earlier posts: DFSAX. This ticker is a mutual fund that is managed in part by Andrew Lo, a renowned MIT professor which is designed as a multi-strategy mutual fund. Multi-strategy funds exist as a mechanism to reduce the overall risk in the market by hedging. Hedging/Multi-Strategy funds allow more freedom within the fund to choose different investments. According to Google, these are the top 10 holdings of the fund as of 1/22/2012: Top 10 holdings Security Net Assets German Euro Schatz Futures Dec11 Xeur 8.25% 10yr Japan Govt Bond Ftrs Tse Dec11 Xtks 7.50% 3yr Australian Tbond Futures Dec11 Xsfe 4.22% 10yr Us Treasury Note Futures Mar12 Xcbt 3.41% German Euro Bund Futures Dec11 Xeur 2.81% Uk Long Gilt Bond Futures Mar12 Xlif 2.76% German Euro Bobl Futures Dec11 Xeur 2.28% Msci Taiwan Index Futures Dec11 Xses 1.10% 10yr Govt Of Canada Bond Ftrs Mar12 Xmon 1.04% As...

This morning I tuned in to Consuelo Mack Wealthtrack. It is one of my favorite shows to listen to with respect to personal finance, but more tuned in on the investing side. I think that the subject matter is quite fascinating, although not as titillating as say the Suze Orman show (which I also happen to like). On this week's show, Consuelo interviewed Phil DeMuth, author of the little book on alternative investments. I found that this was a very interesting author and he seemed like a down-to-earth kind of guy, which is a nice, refreshing change compared to many guests that appear on the show who sometimes seem like they are a little bit divorced from the plight of everyman. Her other guest was John Hathaway, founder of the Tocqueville Gold Fund. During an interesting interchange, there was a comparison of a large sum of gold versus an equal amount of the assets of Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, and the preference seemed to be Berkshire for Phil. However, John Hathaway wa...

Consuelo Mack: Wealthtrack is fast becoming one of my favorite shows to watch on the weekend. This weekend, Consuelo had on David Einhorn from Greenlight Capital, a firm that made its name by shorting large firms during the fiscal crisis and made a killing doing so. Greenlight Capital is a hedge fund, and its investors have been quite happy with the returns. But while he is known for being short, Greenlight capital is about 1.5 long versus 1.0 long in terms of a mix of investments. As for Quantitative Easing, Einhorn referenced the fact that the Fed is targeting inflation, but notes that there is a problem with it. The problem is that the inflation might come, but not where you expect it to. It may come in clothing, energy, food etc. These would be things that everyone needs, not things that are real luxury-type items that people are looking for to increase demand. On Gold, to Einhorn, Gold is money. "The merit of gold is that given [the current crisis] is how we want our assets d...

One of my favorite shows to watch on the weekend is WealthTrack with Consuelo Mack. It is a show offered by Public Television and it has been rated the "Best Money on TV" by Money Magazine (which I used to subscribe to). According to this morning's episode, recorded in January of this year, US Household Wealth fell 11 Trillion Dollars in 2008 or, put another way, a whole 18%. What is the new target number? That is, how much money do I need to generate every month/year in order to live? How do I get to that number? Harold Evensky, Author - Retirement Income Redesigned Marybeth Franklin, Kiplingers Personal Finance Jonathan Clements, Director of Financial Education CITI, Author - The little book of Main Street Money 1.Segment their money - not all at the same time for same purpose 5-10 years of retirement, guaranteed income "Buckets of Money" 2. 6-10 3. 11-15 4. Alternative Investments But where do you keep your assets? For Franklin, the error is clear. Many peopl...

This week Wealthtrack's Consuelo Mack had a sit-down with PIMCO's co-CIO Bill Gross. This was part of a new series of interviews with great investors. It was an interesting episode where Consuelo Mack pointed out some of the clear and present dangers for the United States of America: 1. An increasing reluctance on the part of large foreign nations to take on more treasury debt due to the lack of good real returns and the lack of strong returns on the US investments. 2. Increasing debt levels of the United States being rather sticky since the only way to really combat them is to re-inflate the economy and then pay down the debts with cheaper dollars. Interestingly, Bill was asked the question whether or not there were any investments that he was excited about long term and he answered with a resounding "No." When the conversation drifted into why that was the case, it seemed that the "mean" return for investments long term would be in the 6-8 percent/5-7 perc...

This week's Consuelo Mack WealthTrack was particularly interesting with three notable guests: Tom Forrester, forrester value fund - only value mgr to make money last year 1/2800; Thomas Russo, Gardner Russo Gardner; Randall Forsyth, Editor in Chief Barrons.com The main topic for this week's show was the credit markets. As usual for those who are investors, each felt that there was opportunities in this market. Even despite the negative return of the S+P over the past 10 years, there is even some sense among these experts that a reversion to the mean might actually indicative of decent returns in equities in the years to come. Of particularly interest was the way in which Forrester managed to eke out a positive return last year. His secret was basic: avoid housing and financials. As a result he shifted a large portion to cash and overweighted in other sectors like healthcare. Summarizing the reality of this past year, Forrester noted that 2008 was the 'year of the balance sh...

I read this article about inflation recently. In a nutshell, inflation is a serious concern at this point. And we're not talking about that wonderful 'special' inflation that excludes the cost of food and energy. This type of inflation is absolutely ridiculous because for most families, the inflation on those two items alone is what is effecting their heating, transportation, and food costs. This is not an article about inflation measurement. I think that everyone needs to accept the fact that prices have gone up significantly in a short period of time for the average US citizen. For the average person, this can be a difficult situation to deal with. So, I'd like to describe some anti-inflation strategies. Some of these were talked about this morning on Consuelo Mack: Wealthtrack as a means to describe anti-risk investments. The first basic idea is simple: If you know that the value of the dollar is declining and/or prices are rising, spend the dollars quickly before t...