Radio: The Importance of Real Estate
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David John Marotta was interviewed on radio’s Schilling Show discussing real estate and its importance in your total net worth.

A Guide to Investing in REITs
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REITs are one way to get some of the benefit of investing in real estate without as much of the risk.

What Are The Problems With Illiquid Alternative Investments?
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The larger the spread, the more likely you should neither buy nor sell the asset.

Fund Analyzer Shows Value Of Lower Fees
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Continually curating a list of low cost funds is valuable for long term investors.

Dimensional On: Why Should We Invest Internationally?
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“Historically there has been a wide variety of returns from US and International stocks, and when one does poorly often another does well.”

The Complete Guide to Creating an Investment Plan
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This is a summary of the six steps required to create a well-crafted investment plan.

Why We Do Not Use Active Management
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Index investing seeks to track the return of a portion of the market. The opposite is active management.

Mailbag: Why Doesn’t Everyone Want High-Yield Bonds?
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We don’t recommend high yield bonds because they do nothing good for your overall portfolio.

Why Gold Has Utterly Failed as a “Safe Haven”
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Gold sounds like it should provide a safe haven of your purchasing power much more than it has actually done so.

A Case Study In Volatility
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While volatility can make a fund more attractive on the way up, it can also make a fund less attractive on the way down.

Why Invest In Chile?
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Adding a little bit of Chile to your portfolio can boost returns and reduce volatility.

A Fund Selection Case Study
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We’ve written about how to select securities but in this article we are going to apply those principles to the process of selecting a specific fund for a specific sector of the economy.

Investors Want Non-Correlated Assets Until They Experience Non-Correlation
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While many investors say they want a low-correlation portfolio, they don’t want to actually experience a low-correlation portfolio.

October 2015 and Year-to-Date Returns for Our 6 Asset Classes
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October showed a sharp reversal of the movements of Resource Stocks.

U.S. Growth Stocks Stand Their Ground in 2015
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This year, almost every U.S. asset class is in the red except for growth stocks. When the market is throwing punches, you need a tactical defense.

Which Emerging Markets ETF Should I Buy: VWO or EEM?
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They are based on different indexes and have different expense ratios.

Mailbag: Are Energy Funds A Good Buy?
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The connection between the price of oil and the price of oil companies is loose.

What Is The Relationship Between Turnover Rate and Returns?
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A high turnover rate is not something you want in a stock fund.

How to Select Securities
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Your investment strategy is critically important but the implementation requires wise fund selection.

What Is The Correlation Of Freedom Investing?
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Should we have a “Free Countries Asset Class” or a “Foreign Stock Asset Class?”

Defining Your Sectors
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The process of defining your sectors is an attempt to identify the quintessential features of your strategy and formalize your selection criteria.

What Is The Relationship Between Turnover Rate And Number Of Holdings?
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The greater the number of holdings the lower the turnover rate with one surprising exception.

Do Resource Stocks Deserve Their Own Asset Class?
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Resource stocks represent one of the most interesting collections of diverse indexes as they do not always move in sync with one another.

What Is the Correlation Between Value, Growth, Large and Small Cap Stocks?
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The higher the correlation the greater the justification to put them in the same asset class.

The Asset Allocation Within Your Asset Allocation
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It is good to take the two categories which are most similar and use them as underlying sector divisions within the same larger asset class.

What Is The Correlation Between US Stocks and Foreign Stocks?
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Correlations over the past year have been very low, while correlations over the past 10 years have been higher.

Is Lawsuit Funding A Good Investment?
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“Lawsuit lenders do not advertise prices; they advertise convenience.”

Are Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) Funds Better Investments?
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“What do you think of the idea of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) implemented simply by investing in something like the Domini Social Equity Fund (DSEFX)?”

Jack Bogle: Investing Outside The United States
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“We still have plenty of problems, but we’re much better than France, Britain and Germany.”

Oil Price Predictions Are Essentially Meaningless
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“The most important thing I learned from my research was never to attempt to forecast the price of oil.”

What Happened To The Australian Dollar?
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At first glance, AUNZ did not have great returns in 2014. But is that the whole story?

What Is The Alternative To An Annuity?
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An immediate fixed annuity is not an investment; it is an insurance product.

What Is The US Dollar Index?
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How is the change in the value of the dollar computed?

Guess What Statistic Has The Highest Correlation With The S&P 500?
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David Leinweber calls this technique, “torturing the data until it screams.”

Should You Be Building Bond Ladders In This Lower Rate Environment?
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There was an interesting article by Joseph Lisanti in Financial Planning Magazine entitled, “Should You Be Building Bond Ladders?” which read in part: As with many strategies, laddering works best for clients with sufficient assets to benefit fully from it. … Read More

How To Diversify Highly Appreciated Stock
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Exchange funds, also know as swap funds, can provide investors with one highly appreciated security a way to trade it for an equivalently valued but more diversified portfolio.

Style Box Annualized Returns For The Past Three Years
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Morningstar data for the 3-year annualized returns based on style boxes shows us three interesting lessons.

The Efficient Frontier Of Investing
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Many investors don’t appreciate asset allocation or understand intuitively how a diversified portfolio can exceed the sum of its parts.

Every Bond Contract Has At Least Five Components
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Unlike stocks, each bond contract has unique characteristics that define how repayment will occur.

Economic Freedom Matters 2014
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Economic freedom enriches society, lifts the poor out of poverty and respects the agency and dignity of human choice.

Freedom Investing Over The Past Decade
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The portfolio of the five freedom countries has an annualized return of 11.06% over the past decade.

The Truth About Annuities
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Most financial planning articles about annuities pull their punches.

Should I Wait Until After The End Of The World To Start Investing?
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When the dust settles, can I really buy things for pennies on the dollar?

Annuities Are Still A Bad Idea
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“Up until recently” annuities were a bad idea. They still are.

Hedge Fund Advice In One Word: Don’t
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The documents where you can review 20 key issues looking for 10 red flags, or…

Housing Market Picking Up and Interest Rates Rising
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I expect we have seen the bottom of both the housing market and 30-year fixed interest rates.

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