Retirement Watch Weekly
Updating the Tax-Exempt Bond Market
The tax-exempt bond market continues to attract headlines and raises concerns among investors. Investors have been on edge since Meredith Whitney’s late-2010 remarks that quite a few tax-exempt bond defaults were on the way. Since then there have been a few high-profile bankruptcy filings by municipalities, but the cascade of defaults some were expecting hasn’t […]
Is It a High-Yield Bond Bubble?
Investors have been pouring money into high-yield bond funds, shrinking the yields on the bonds and causing some to say the market is risky and bordering on bubble territory. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal recently had articles airing the views of pessimists.There’s another view. But as with other assets, the historical […]
More Warnings on High-Yield Bonds
We’ve had high-yield bonds in our Retirement Watch portfolios for a while, and we’ve done well with them. But when an investment does well for a while, it’s time to worry about whether it’s reaching overvalued territory and losing its margin of safety. You can find a good summary of the current risks in high […]
Debating Medicare
The future of Medicare is a big part of this year’s elections. You’re going to hear a lot of sound bites and arguments about Medicare and various proposals to change it. I think it’s important to do research yourself before hearing the incomplete and sometimes distorted comments in the media. Here are a few facts […]
More Senseless Data Mining
One of the themes of my book, Invest Like a Fox…Not Like a Hedgehog, is that investors waste a lot of time and energy trying to find the silver bullet of investing. Specifically, they comb through data looking for a key that will tell them when to buy and sell stocks or take other actions. […]
Reviewing Stocks’ Long-Term Returns
A generation or more of investors were educated to believe that stocks offer the highest long-term returns, and that stocks offer an extended real return of 6.6% annually. Bill Gross last week questioned whether that situation will persist for the next generation of investors, or at least for the next 10 years or so. Barry […]
Why to Own Gold
Gold doesn’t receive much thorough, academic attention as an investment. It’s generally the province of gold bugs, gold haters, and technical traders. That’s why I’m interested in this paper from Claude Erb of TCW and Campbell Harvey of Duke University. There’s a lot of detail in the paper, covering both the demand and supply for […]
Attacking Reverse Mortgages
For many years in Retirement Watch I’ve presented a balanced view of reverse mortgages. These are tools for seniors to draw down their home equity without having to move from their homes or make payments during their lifetimes. I’ve maintained they are good tools in some situations and detailed those situations. The new Consumer Financial […]
