I received an e-mail from my employer’s HR department this week announcing some changes to our 401(k) plan. Here’s what they said (emphasis added by me, fund names masked). The 401(k) Committee decided to remove the ABC Fund from the Plan due to poor performance for several quarters. The committee closely monitors all funds in […]
Successful Business Strategy: Selling Hope
While reading newspapers on a plane, I discovered a winning business strategy: Selling Hope. The products you sell don’t have to work as advertised. They may or may not. That’s not the point. All you have to do is selling the hope that they will work. There are plenty of examples for this strategy. Airborne […]
Tax and Inflation Penalize Savers
I bought some EE savings bonds in May 2002. Today is the first day I get to redeem them without penalty. Each $100 saved back then is now worth $118.40. This is one of my worst investments in the last five years. My return on these EE savings bonds is 3.44% a year over the […]
Vanguard or T. Rowe Price Funds: Actively Managed vs. Index Funds
Blogger pf at My Personal Finance Odyssey reviewed his investments in T. Rowe Price funds. He gathered last 5 years’ performance numbers for the T. Rowe Price funds he invested in and the performance numbers for similar funds by Vanguard. His analysis showed that many T. Rowe Price funds had better returns than the comparable […]
Opt In or Opt Out: The Power of the Default Option
I read a great article on New York Times last week, Unnatural Selections. The author, Mr. Barry Schwartz is a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College. He wrote about the power of the default option. People tend to stay with the default option presented to them because deviating from the default option requires making a […]
Simplifying Finances: Recent Trades
The financial market had a small scare at the end of February. A 10% drop in the Chinese stock market induced a 400-point drop in the Dow. Recent turmoil in subprime lending had the market go down and then up. I don’t know or care where the market is going, but I did take the […]
Picking Stocks Is a Waste of Time
The 2/26/2007 issue of the Wall Street Journal had a special section for stock score board. If you don’t have access to WSJ Online, it’s worth digging it out from a library. I’m highlighting something I noticed in that section which makes the point for the title of this post — picking stocks is a […]
Bogleheads Forum Moved To Diehards.org
The new Diehards in the Vanguard forum I wrote about two weeks ago was renamed to Bogleheads forum. It moved to the diehards.org domain, which has been the more popular entry point for the old Morningstar forum. Diehards.org is the #1 spot on Google when you search for “Vanguard Diehards.” They changed the forum’s name […]
Prosper Lending Return on Investment Analysis
IndexFundFan alerted me to an excellent review for person-to-person lending on Prosper.com by Jonathan at My Money Blog: part 1, part 2. I wrote about Prosper in a previous post Prosper.com Or Junk Bond Fund?, in which I said if people want to take credit risks, there are other places to take them, such as […]
Zions Direct Online CD Auctions Update
This is a follow-up to my previous post Bank CDs by Auction: Name Your Own Yield. The second online CD auction at Zions Direct closed today at 2:02 pm EST. Up for auction was $2 million 3-month CDs issued by Zions First National Bank with a coupon of 5.25%. The auction received 88 bids from […]
Bank CDs by Auction: Name Your Own Yield
An ad for CD auctions by Zions Direct caught my eyes. I’ve been buying Treasury Bills and TIPS notes at auction through Fidelity for quite a while. I’ve also bought CDs through brokerage firms before. But I’ve never heard of bank CDs sold by auction. So I decided to take a look. The auctions are […]
New Diehards in the Vanguard Forum
[Update on July 19, 2008]: The name of the forum changed to Bogleheads Investment Forum. diehards.org domain name also changed to bogleheads.org. I have been a member of the Vanguard Diehards forum at Morningstar for a long time. People there help each other with investment related discussions. The forum however has a weakest link — […]