You (Get To) Choose Which Game To Play
We hope that you and yours are doing well as we swing into the holiday season. In a world both wondrous and sometimes weird, you may have mixed emotions about the days, months, and the new year ahead of us – an intermingling of fear and optimism, hope and hesitation, possibly even sorrow and joy. And you may have noticed that the markets have been swinging through every one of these same emotions as well, in real, seemingly manic time.
For capital markets, that’s perfectly alright. In fact, it’s precisely what they’re supposed to be doing. Out of the seeming chaos, an efficient method arises for setting and re-setting relatively fair pricing. It’s exactly how tens of millions of trades occur every day, at lightning speed, around the world. If prices instead grew sluggish or stagnant, so too would our ability to make money in the markets.
That said, while apparent mayhem may make perfect sense for moving markets, it’s not how you need to live when thinking about your portfolio. As an individual investor, you get to choose which game to play. > SEE MORE
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Waypoint Wealth Management
Active Management’s Surprising Survival
While this article does get a little into the technical side of investing this month, its theme is at the core of our philosophy at Waypoint so we think it’s a good reminder to investors and clients. It involves the idea (myth, really) that investors can consistently create “alpha” or out-performance by making changes to their investments (or hiring someone to do so) based on their current opinion with where we are economically or politically or historically. Recently, our Director of Research with the BAM Alliance Larry Swedroe wrote (again) about the truths and myths of “active” investment management and the attempt to outperform:
It’s truly an amazing paradox. According to the Thomson Reuters Lipper second-quarter 2018 snapshot of U.S. mutual funds and exchange-traded products, active funds of all kinds, including money market funds, manage about $16.4 trillion.
That’s more than 2 1/2 times the $6 trillion managed by passive funds and ETFs. That’s also despite the overwhelming evidence that active management is a loser’s game (one that’s possible to win, but with odds of doing so that are so poor, the winning strategy is not to play). > SEE MORE
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The BAM Alliance
Many Eggs; Many Baskets: The Importance of Global Diversification
As we wrote about back in April (10 Ways To Not Sweat The Small Stuff With Investing), market volatility has once again picked up. If you’re like most, this is a news story that will take your attention from time to time. So with that said, we felt like it was a good time to underscore the perennial value of building – and maintaining – a globally diversified investment portfolio for achieving your greatest financial goals.
Global diversification is such a powerful antacid for when (not if!) we experience market turbulence, it’s why we’ve long recommended spreading your market risks:
- According to your personal goals and risk tolerances
- Between stock and bond markets
- Among evidence-based sources of expected long-term returns
- Around the world
In short, broad, global diversification never goes out of style. > SEE MORE
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Waypoint Wealth Management
What Is The “Yield Curve”?
The yield curve is flattening (or growing steeper)! … Yield curve spreads are widening (or narrowing)! … The yield curve has inverted (or normalized)!
Headline-grabbing yield curve commentary somehow sounds important, doesn’t it? But what is a “yield curve” to begin with, and what does it have to do with you and your investments?
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Waypoint Wealth Management
Trade Troubles?
You may have heard or read the news of an escalating trade war between the United States and China, which has dominated headlines recently as both countries formally imposed substantial tariffs on one another. In response to the Trump administration’s 25 percent tariff on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods (largely industrial and technology products), the Chinese government levied tariffs of equal size on certain U.S. goods (largely agricultural products). The U.S. government is expected to launch a second round of tariffs on China, worth another $16 billion, in the next few weeks. Then on July 11, the White House announced it is preparing yet another wave of tariffs targeting China to go into effect sometime after August 30.
This most recent trade conflict follows tariffs of up to 25 percent that the Trump administration imposed in June on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union, who then countered with levies on U.S. exports ranging from maple syrup to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
How do these decisions affect you, and is there anything we should be doing about it when it comes to your investments? > SEE MORE
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