July 2008 Newsletter
The Economy - Traditional View
vs. Current View
by Guy Baker
There was a good bit of positive economic data released last week, except the stock market didn't react to it.
Even consumers seemed to be wary of that old saying about "fooling all of the people all of the time."
Is real estate a viable investment opportunity yet?
by Tony Ronan
Most real estate owners are homeowners. And from an owner-occupied perspective, ownership today makes absolute sense. This assumes, of course, that you plan to live in your primary owner occupied residence for a minimum of 3 years. This gives the market time to shake off the after effects of the sub prime crisis which has been so pervasive.
Not all real estate owners are home owners, some are investors, and some are speculators. From a pure investment standpoint, we question . . . -READ MORE-
Doing investment research?
You're probably wasting your time
Are you the type of investor who diligently researches an investment or the markets before making your decisions?
If so, you might be making a lot of mistakes: innate biases make it very difficult for any investor—even professionals—to make good decisions based on detailed research.
Investors’ behavior penalizes
growth
The U.S. stock market enjoyed a major bull run in the second half of the 1990s, with the S&P 500 Index climbing an average of almost 29 percent per year between 1995 and 1999.
However, it appears that the average investor did not reap much of that reward, says John Bogle, former chairman of the Vanguard Group, a major mutual fund company.
In comments made to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority last year, Bogle said investor returns on mutual funds during and after this period were much lower than the gross returns of the funds themselves.
Mutual funds that trade a lot suffer from lower returns
There seems to be an inverse relationship between trading 
activity and investment returns: the more you buy and sell, the lower your returns.
Various studies have come to this conclusion. A study of thousands of individual investors using a discount broker found that the most frequent traders had the worst average performance.
And a well-known study of mutual funds by Mark M. Carhart of Goldman Sachs in 1997 showed that . . . . -READ MORE-
Health crisis, rich recession, & more
The soaring cost of medical care is hurting the average American’s finances, a recent survey found.
Sixty percent of workers have been hit with higher costs from insurance plans offered by their employers, says the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
. . -READ MORE-