Steadfast Finances

 Buy on the Dips, Index Funds, Investing 101         3 comments

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On March 9, 2009, the stock market closed at it’s lowest level in over a decade. The doom and gloom news factories were pumping out negativity as loudly as it could because that was what “people wanted to hear.”
You couldn’t pick up a newspaper, click to highly trafficked website, or …

 Index Funds, Investing 101, Peer to Peer Lending         13 comments

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Some interesting, perhaps troubling, results from the Merrill Lynch Quarterly Affluent Insights Survey this morning.
Younger investors are more risk averse than older investors. Those in their 20s and 30s are more risk averse than the 40s and 50s demographic because they been burned twice in the last decade.
Older investors are …

 Index Funds, Investing 101, Strategic Planning         2 comments

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I knew the aughts decade, the bubble decade, the lost decade, or whatever you choose to call it was a bad time for stock market performance, but I really didn’t think it was this bad.

Image from Chart of the Day
Pretty depressing stuff when you consider that we started the decade …

 Index Funds, Investing 101, Long-Term Stocks         4 comments

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I’m something of an oddity in the investing world when it comes to finding the best buy and hold investments: I do not limit myself to a one individual method of stock analysis.
In other words, I’m not 100% reliant upon fundamental analysis where I only review the financial statements and …

 Credit Cards, ETFs, Index Funds         5 comments

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Charles Schwab wants to get into the index fund and ETF business. Badly!
In doing so, Schwab has created a series of funds to undercut the industry leader — Vanguard — by offering the lowest expense ratio ETFs and index funds on the market. With an expense ratio as low as …

 ETFs, Index Funds, Investing 101, Risk Management         12 comments

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Earlier this week, everyone’s favorite emerging market — Brazil — gave a classic example of why it can be dangerous to invest in emerging markets. Out of the blue, the Brazilian government implemented a 2% tax on any incoming foreign investment to reduce the possibility of a speculative stock …

 Index Funds, Investing 101, Mutual Funds         6 comments

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The debate over choosing actively managed mutual funds versus passively managed funds (via index funds) is nothing new, and in all likelihood, will keep on going for hundreds of years.
While some will say it is entirely possible to outperform the market, index fund proponents will argue that it’s impossible to …

 Global Economy, Index Funds         No comments

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Some sage words of advice from Vanguard’s chief economist, Joe Davis, and Jonathan Lemco, global markets analyst.

Key points:

The world economy is still in recession, but the rate of deceleration is starting to slow. (Clever way of saying the worst is over, but we’re still falling).
Much of the world has seen …

 ETFs, Index Funds, Investing 101         7 comments

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In last decade, specialty ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) are probably the hottest thing to hit Wall Street since the rise of the discount brokers in the mid 1990s.
Initially, ETFs were not very popular because they only tracked the performance of a few stock market indices.
However, in today’s investing world, ETFs …

 Buy on the Dips, Index Funds, Investing 101         7 comments

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Several folks have asked me over the last few weeks what does phrase “buy on the dips” actually mean.
The official Investopedia definition is:
A slang phrase regarding the practice of purchasing stocks following a decline in prices. After a significant dip in the price of a security or stock index, investors should increase positions …

 Index Funds, Investing 101         7 comments

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Short sellers are often cast as the big bad villains on Wall Street.
After all, they are the all knowing, short term traders placing big money bets hoping your portfolio goes down in value while they turn a quick profit.
Unfortunately, for all of the bearish sentiment they spew and openly spout …

 Dividend Investing, ETFs, Index Funds, Investing 101         1 comment

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Have you noticed that everyone seems more interested in the esoteric, out of the ordinary types of investments these days?
I have.
Some people might want to buy gold because they’re caught up in the fear trade, or others might want to buy raw commodities like oil or natural gas because they’re …