Morningstar is the premier destination for investment research, news, tools and analysis. Whether you invest in individual stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, derivatives or even hedge funds, Morningstar can help make you a smarter (and richer) investor.
I’ve been a premium member of Morningstar for a long time, but even its free level of membership offers [...]
Picking mutual funds to entrust your hard earned cash can often feel like a crap shoot. The experts tell us not to look at past results, but let’s be honest, it’s the first thing most of us look at. And if past results are not an indicator of future performance, why are past [...]
What do Home Depot, Anheuser Busch, and Carmax have in common? Here’s a hint: Bank of America, American Express, and General Electric have the same thing in common. The answer is they are all investments by a “mutual fund” that does not charge you a load fee or annual expenses. You’ve [...]
According to Standard and Poor’s, the S&P 500 is down 40.29% for the year. And just in case you thought that was a typo, I’ll repeat myself: the S&P 500 is down forty point twenty-nine percent so far in 2008. Ouch! Now here is something that is far more important. [...]
You’ve decided to invest in your future. You’ve picked the perfect mutual fund. You’re ready to go. Now what? How do you actually go about buying shares of a mutual fund? The good news is that buying shares of a mutual fund is quick and easy. If you’ve never [...]
Whether it comes to investing, making money blogging, or just about anything else in life, popularity can come with a hefty price tag. With investing, following the crowd is a surefire way to lose a lot of money as you repeatedly sell low and buy high out of fear of market losses. With [...]
The S&P 500 Index is arguably the best known and most followed index of publicly traded companies. There are hundreds of S&P 500 index funds and exchange traded funds to chose from if you want an investment that tracks the S&P 500 Index. Since they all track the same index, these mutual funds [...]
I read with dismay the following from an “investment professional” in yesterday’s Washington Post:
Now is not the time to drink the “buy and hold” investment strategy Kool-Aid. Be conservative, limit your risk–and sleep well knowing your investment principal is not going to continue to decline.
The comment was in response to the following hypothetical question: [...]
Vanguard recently launched an index mutual fund designed to track the performance of the FTSE All-World Index, a benchmark of approximately 2,900 stocks in 47 countries. With the introduction of Vanguard’s Total World Stock Index Fund (VTWSX), investors can now mimic the world market in a single fund.
Much like the convenience of target date [...]
