Do you know why you own bonds?

Do you know why you own bonds in your portfolio? There are many reasons to own bonds but one of the biggest reasons historically is no longer a good one for many investors. Bonds are often held in portfolios to provide a safe and steady source of income, in particular Read more…

Pray for higher interest rates

OK. I know. I’m schizophrenic.  In my last post I’m telling you why I think interest rates will stay low longer than people expect. Now, I’m going to explain how rates could go higher and why I’m hoping they do. One of the things that makes investing a challenge is Read more…

The new muni bond scare

Here we go again. Just as we hit the one year anniversary of Meredith Whitney’s famous, or more accurately infamous, muni bond call a new muni bond scare has surfaced. This time its the potential change to municipal bond’s tax status. Lets take a look at this latest fear and Read more…

Longevity insurance – not worth it

There was a recent post at the Times’ Bucks Blog about Longevity Insurance that caught my attention. I decided to run some numbers to see what returns are implied in the current prices of longevity insurance and compare that to the risks, and the alternative of just keeping your money Read more…

Death by Bonds II

Here I go again. Bond bashing time. I think many income investors worried about risk mistakenly focus too much on the lower volatility of bonds as a risk measure. Volatility is only one measure of risk. On other measures of risk bonds perform just as poorly as stocks but with Read more…