WISE Money – Wedding To-do List: Give Yourself a Money Checkup

Amid an engagement, it's easy for couples to overlook key financial points that can affect their financial security and their relationship. As couples plan their wedding, it's a good idea to do some foundational financial planning, as well.

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“Fight The Fights That Are Worth Fighting”

Do you work with a financial advisor? If so, is that advisor required to put your interest ahead of his/her own? If you are like 99% of other investors out there, you probably don’t know for sure. The vast majority of advisors are brokers or have the option to operate as a broker, and therefore don’t have to act in their client’s best interest.

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You Are Not A Contrarian

It seems like every investor (amateur or professional) bills themselves as a contrarian.  They will tell you that they tend to buy unloved or unwanted companies when they are trading for a great bargain.  The simple fact is that this is very hard.  The Motley Fool has a great article on this very topic.

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What Is The Best Vehicle To Accumulate Wealth?

What is the best vehicle for accumulating long-term wealth?  This is a question worth thinking about as an investor, and a recent Gallup poll shows that only 37% of those surveyed believed that stocks were a good method for accumulating wealth.

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The Predictive Power (Or Lack Thereof) Of Stock Market Indicators

There is really no indicator that we know of that can predict stock market performance.  If there ever were, it would very quickly be arbitraged away since markets tend to be fairly efficient.  Merrill Lynch uses a metric they call the “Sell Side Indicator” to determine future stock performance.

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Beating The Market: Luck Or Skill?

There is a great post at the Big Picture blog about whether luck or skill is the determining factor to outperforming the market. The short answer: luck. Research has shown this to be the case, but some other points in the article are worth reviewing.

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Fleecing Investors, When Will They Learn?

Several days ago, Bloomberg wrote a scathing article on Managed Futures Funds. These funds started to gain much more popularity after 2008. They tend to be non-correlated to the overall market, appealing to investors after losing over half their money in the stock market.

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Pay Me My Fair Share- Profits vs. Wages

One of the big themes we have seen over the past several years is capital over labor.  Corporations have seen an explosion in income while paying their workers some of the lowest wages in history. Here is a chart that shows labor as a percentage of GDP (blue) versus corporate profits as a percentage of GDP (red).

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Revisiting Gold

The number of calls we have received about gold has certainly diminished over the past several months as the yellow metal has lost over 25% of its value from the peak.  Here is a chart of the last few years.

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