All Entries Tagged With: "$SPY"
Diversification: Timing Is Everything (At Least Sometimes)
I took a look at Doug Short’s chart on the “break even” level for the S&P 500, showing that if you invested in that index at the nominal all-time closing high on March 24, 2000 (just before the tech bubble burst), you’d now be just breaking even (commissions not factored in the calculation). But what [...]
Gestalt Investing: Looking For Value Others Don’t See
This week’s Barron’s has an interview with Marty Whitman, Chairman of Third Avenue Management and co-manager of the Third Avenue Value Fund (TAVFX). Interestingly, Mr. Whitman says “diversification is a damn poor surrogate for knowledge” and that to succeed as a value investor, “you have to be a gestaltist.” A gestalt approach to investing? If [...]
Buy and HOLDR? A Decade of Poor Performance
Pretend for a moment that on a late summer day a decade ago you had this great “buy and hold” investment idea. “I know,” you said to yourself, ”I’ll invest a few hundred dollars in each of the world’s 50 largest companies and hold them for at least a decade.” So how would you have [...]
ETFs: The More the Merrier
SmartMoney took note of the 130 new ETFs launched this year, but describes many of them as “ETFs for Everyone Except You,” The universe of exchange-traded funds is still rapidly expanding, but the growing landscape is threatening to leave small investors lost in a maze of new options. What’s making the ETF marketplace more complex [...]
What’s the True Price of Gold Insurance?
Although calls and puts are not insurance products per se, they can be used to protect or hedge an investment, much like insurance policies protect an asset. Brad Zigler of HardAssetsInvestors posted an article on the “price of gold insurance” as measured by the options market. He compares the prices of December put options on [...]
The New CBOE Weekly Options: Expiration Week Every Week
When you look at options chains for a few selected stocks and ETFs, you’ll notice something new. If you see a “W,” note that these are “weekly options” that expire the very next week. That’s because the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) is adding these so-called “weeklys” to some additional stocks and ETFs. According to [...]
Yield Bribery? Comparing Stocks to Bonds
David Loeper wrote an article for Forbes on the pitfalls of investing in high-yield securities, such as preferred stocks and corporate bonds. His main point about risk is sound: The higher the yield, the higher the risk. So, instead of a higher yield being thought of as attractive what investors should think of is it [...]
Halfway Through 2010: Biggest S&P 500 Winners and Losers
On July 2, MarketWatch published two articles covering the “10 biggest winners” and “10 biggest losers” among S&P 500 stocks for the first half of 2010. Because these articles are presented as slide shows, let me save you the trouble of clicking through all 20 slides. Here are the top winners and losers that MarketWatch [...]
The PowerShares QQQ ETF: A Stock Index “Myth”
The debate over whether to use ETFs or own individual stocks is something ZeccoShare Community members have been discussing lately. The issue centers on diversification – and whether or not that’s a worthwhile goal, as also addressed in this earlier ZeccoPulse post: Dump Your Individual Stocks for ETFs? I’d always thought that extremely broad based [...]
