Mutual funds that charge investors sales charges, called loads, should never be a part of your investment portfolio. And yet, in just about every portfolio I have reviewed in the last six months, that’s practically all I’ve seen. It is clear to me that investors who have retained the services of financial consultants, brokers and [...]

This month the Supreme Court took up a case to determine whether mutual fund fees are being determined correctly and whether investors get enough information to adequately understand the fees they are paying. The case, Harris Associates v Jones, pits a well-known mutual fund family against individual investors who claim they are charged twice as [...]

Most days you’ll find Anton Schutz, the portfolio manager of the Burnham Financial Industries Fund (BURFX), in and around Rochester, N.Y. far from the canyons of Wall Street in lower Manhattan. It certainly hasn’t hurt his fund’s performance however, since it ranks among the top two percent of all U.S. equity funds this year, according [...]

As the price of an ounce of gold bullion gyrates around the $1,000 mark, I continue to receive numerous calls concerning the precious metal from clients, readers and even people who would normally never consider investing in financial markets. What is it about gold that brings out the best and worst in us?

In case you missed it, Morgan Stanley took control of rival broker Smith Barney from its former parent Citigroup Inc. this week. The new venture called Morgan Stanly Smith Barney will now move into first place as the world’s largest retail broker with 18,000 financial advisers. With the stupendous arrogance that only Wall Street brokers [...]

The daily machinations of the stock markets permeate our lives. Via the radio, the internet, television and print we are bombarded with the market’s daily ups and downs from the opening bell to the close. No matter how hard we try to ignore it, over time it begins to influence how we think about the [...]

This week’s turmoil in the world’s stock markets has investors in a panic. On the surface it appears as if we are in the midst of a financial meltdown. In less than a week the financial landscape of America has changed more than it has in years. Pillars of finance like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, [...]

There is a flight to quality underway in the financial markets and U.S. Treasury bonds called “Governments” are the traditional place to hide when Godzilla roams Wall Street. But over the last six months Treasury Indexed Protected securities, called TIPs have proven to be an even more popular and lucrative haven. TIPs offer a hedge [...]

This column is for the risk adverse among us, especially those who would like to be in the stock market but may be afraid of loosing your shirt (or blouse). A relatively new investment vehicle in the United States, called Structured Products, could be the right prescription for you.

Everyone lives with risk everyday so why, asks a reader recently, “is risk so confusing when it comes to investing my money?” The answer lies in how most investors interpret the meaning of risk in financial markets.