In my latest post on investment fees I compared the impact the average fees of active mutual funds vs have on total investment returns. I also compared the active mutual fund fees to those of index funds and to those of individual stock investments. That exercise was a bit theoretical Read more…
How are the majority of retirees getting by? Do they have enough in savings and investments to make ends meet or live the lifestyles they want? This is a topic I think about a lot. Being on the road full-time and living the RV lifestyle my wife and I meet Read more…
Now that the first half of 2011 is over I wanted to step back and look at the performance of the sectors in the income investor dashboard. Lets look at the YTD performance of the dashboard and see if it offers any insights. Below are the 1H 2011 total returns Read more…
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…
Wow! That was truly a crazy last week of the month. A great week for stocks and a not so great week for bonds. This is when zooming out and looking at market changes over a monthly period helps to add some perspective. Having said that lets jump right in Read more…
Investment fees are such a detriment to future wealth that literally investors should flee from them like their lives depended on it. I’ve touched on the topic of investment fees before using hypothetical fees and looked at their long term impact. It’s awful. But it looks even worse when fees Read more…
Top quality insurance companies are among the best values in the market today. I’ve written about Fairfax Financial before as the best stealth dividend stock in the world and about their CEO, Prem Watsa, who is often called the Warren Buffett of Canada. As it turns out, Berkshire Hathaway is Read more…
I thought today would be a good day to discuss the recent Q2 2011 dividend announcements from the mortgage REIT (mREIT) companies that I track. Six out of the seven mREITs I follow have announced their Q2 dividends. For my previous posts on mREITs see here. Also, today the fed Read more…
In my last post I described what I consider the worst case scenario for MLPs in the event that their tax favored status ends overnight. Today I want to look at a few of the upsides of such an event. Yes, I do think there are upsides to ending the Read more…
What is the worst that could happen? That’s a question I always ask myself when making an investment. I look at the major risks posed to an investment and do a worst case scenario analysis with respect to that risk factor. When it comes to MLPs probably the major risk Read more…
This is the 3rd post on mortgage REIT basics. In my last post on mortgage REITs (mREITs) I discussed interest rate risk. Today, I’ll discuss the other two major risks in investing in mREITs, credit risk and liquidity risk. Both of these risks can lay dormant for long periods of Read more…