Personal Money Management 101 Blog

Keep your finger on the pulse of all the latest personal finance news and views.

Kiplinger’s provides you with the information you need to make smart decisions about your money. Each issue includes reporting on investments, taxes, insurance, paying for college, planning for retirement, home ownership, major purchases such as cars and computers and other personal finance topics.

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If you leave enough monkeys sitting at typewriters for long enough one of them will eventually tap out a masterpiece of literature. Today it’s widely held that it’s impossible to consistently beat the markets. Yet one man stands alone for doing just that - Warren Buffett.

Is Buffett simply the lucky monkey that chance has smiled on, or are there lessons for every investor in his unique approach? Robert G. Hagstrom’s The Buffett Way sets out to expound Buffett’s approach in a way that every investor can learn something from. Read the rest of this entry »

by Steve Selengut

“The time has come the walrus said, to talk of many things”: Of corrections–portfolios— and window dressing— of market cycles— wizards— and reality.

Quarterly portfolio window dressing is one of many immortal Jaberwock-like creatures that roam the granite canyons of the Manhattan triangle, sending inappropriate signals to unwary investors and media spokespersons.  Many of you, like the unsuspecting young oysters in the Lewis Carroll classic, are responding to the daily news nonsense with fear instead of embracing the new opportunities that are surely right there, cloaked, just beyond your short-term vision field.

Read Quarterly Window Dressing - A Recurrent Wall Street Scam in full…

Steve Selengut http://www.sancoservices.com | http://www.kiawahgolfinvestmentseminars.com Professional Portfolio Management since 1979. Author of: “The Brainwashing of the American Investor: The Book that Wall Street Does Not Want YOU to Read”, and “A Millionaire’s Secret Investment Strategy”

There is widespread agreement that index (tracker) funds produce superior returns to the average actively managed fund (see Why Managed Funds are Bad for your Wealth). That is, if you invest in a tracker you’ll most likely make more than if you invested in active management. It must be said that some active funds do beat the index; the problem is they can’t be identified in advance. Trying to find them is akin to playing roulette. The corollary of this is that the bulk of your stock portfolio be held in index tracker funds or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Read the rest of this entry »

by Steve Selengut

Gets your attention, doesn’t it? The unfortunate thing though, is that most people will react negatively to this intentionally inflammatory, media-ready, title statement. Has some Wall Street virus attacked our financial experience memory chip? Bouncing around unpredictably is precisely what the markets have always done. In the last forty years, there have been no less than ten 20% or greater corrections followed by rallies that brought the markets to significantly higher levels. Volatility is not a bad thing— a non-event, even.

Read Volatility Rocks The Investment Markets in full 

Steve Selengut
http://www.sancoservices.com/ | http://www.kiawahgolfinvestmentseminars.com
Professional Portfolio Management since 1979. Author of: “The Brainwashing of the American Investor: The Book that Wall Street Does Not Want YOU to Read”, and “A Millionaire’s Secret Investment Strategy”