Are closed-end fund preferred-auction securities safe? We consider CFPs to be the conservative's conservative security. Defaults are even rarer than failed auctions. We are comfortable with the safety of auction securities from closed-end funds...
Wall Street is shifting loyalties. So far in the 2008 election cycle, the securities and investment industry has showered the Democratic Party with contributions. The balance began to shift in 2006, when the industry gave 53 percent of donations...
When the search for alpha takes conservative portfolios such as the Harvard and Yale endowments into the land of bellies, beans and bullion, investors and their advisors take notice. Consider that David Swensen, in charge of Yale's portfolio (and...
Using a wide-ranging investing style, Peter Lynch dominated the fund world during the 1980s. The manager of Fidelity Magellan was known to pick stocks from all over the market: He would buy small bank stocks one year and large industrials the next...
Maybe Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain just wanted to test his audience. At an investment conference today, Thain said that Merrill would abandon CDO underwriting and other structured-credit businesses, the very ones that led to the subprime meltdown...
Since the first exchange-traded bond fund appeared in 2002, financial rocket scientists have struggled to launch a tax-free ETF. The development efforts finally bore fruit in September, when Barclays Global Investors launched its iShares S&P...
Moshe Milevsky, professor of Finance at York University Canada, is a widely recognized innovator in the field of retirement-income planning, insurance and pensions. Milevsky has been instrumental in developing the personal longevity insurance...
Many users of the popular tenant-in-common (TIC) investment vehicle in commercial real estate are hoping they have the stamina to withstand a double blow
For years, investors have been waiting for a revival of growth funds. The moment may have arrived. During the first seven months of 2007, large-cap growth funds outdid large-cap value by more than 3 percentage points. But growth funds can be...
The curious thing about a bubble is, when it bursts, you can't believe people actually behaved the way they did. (Remember, in the late 1990s, backing up the truck and buying the QQQQ for clients? Nah, not you.) Consider what a sweet temptation...