To the people who love them, style boxes are great diversification tools. Bob Olstein is not one of those people. Those boxes are artificial barriers, and somebody should rip them up, says Olstein, manager of top-performing Olstein Financial Alert...
Separate accounts or mutual funds? The choice can be difficult, and often advisors feel compelled to pick one and ignore the other. Indeed, until recently, the case against mixing two investment types in the same portfolio has been a potent one...
When stocks plunged in 2000, dispirited fund investors looked enviously at hedge funds. By selling short or investing in mergers, hedge fund owners could make money even when the S&P 500 collapsed. But hedge funds are far from a perfect solution...
With the economy improving and interest rates still near four-decade lows, bond investors might be feeling afraid, very afraid. And with good reason a sharp rise in rates would punish most fixed-income holdings. Government bonds, which enjoyed a...
The disclaimers regarding Morningstar's rating system have always been there for investors. Advisors have long warned that the company's famous star-based system is misleading in its simplicity, and academic researchers have concurred, saying...
Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, a first-term Republican from Illinois, chairs the only Senate committee investigating mutual fund trading abuses the Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Financial Management, the Budget and International Security. As such...
The term proven commodity is deadon accurate when it comes to investments: Time after time, commodities have proved resilient in downturns. For instance, natural resources funds stayed in the black while the S&P 500 lost more than 10 percent...
When New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced his investigations into improper mutual funds trading practices, the reaction in the press and on the Street was swift and overwhelmingly breathless. In a headline, Money magazine announced...
It would appear that corporate cost cutting and a string of positive economic data are putting investors in a sunny mood again. Take, the Nasdaq, for example it's up by 40 percent this year. But before you chuck out all those bear funds that you...
Just when it looked like all those scandals were behind us and the markets were helping mend fences with leery clients, the business has gotten yet another black eye. This time, the problem is with mutual funds more precisely how favored traders...
