Wealth Management | Plancorp | Investment Strategy (8)

Credit: Associated Press, Vincent Yu Read more…

Women are empowered in so many ways today, but unfortunately, finance is not among the top categories. The concept of gender equality still has a ways to go in the investment world. Read more…

Index Fund An index fund is a mutual fund whose portfolio seeks to replicate the performance of some financial benchmark either by owning a representative sample of the stocks contained in that benchmark or by owning all of them. An index is passively managed which means, unlike actively managed Read more…

For the past 11 years, the S&P Indices Versus Active (SPIVA) Scorecard has been the de facto scorekeeper of the active versus passive debate, and last month they released their mid-year update. Below is a graphic of active funds that failed to beat their respective index. As you can see, the Read more…

Meet Penelope the cow. NPR’s Planet Money asked the internet how much Penelope weighed and got 17,205 responses. The average of all the responses was 1,287 pounds and the actual weight was 1,355 pounds. The average was off by only five percent. This experiment, which was originally conducted in Read more…

I wrote an article at the beginning of the summer titled Volatility is Not the Enemy. I remember thinking it would be the perfect article for whenever the market had a correction. Since it had been nearly four years since the last correction, I figured it should be published and referred back to Read more…

Individual investors never seem very interested in their bond portfolio. Maybe it’s because bonds lack the sense of identity that often comes with owning a stock. Think about it: nobody brags out about lending money to Apple, they brag about owning Apple. In addition, you can theoretically own a Read more…

Rising interest rates have been a concern among bond investors for many years. The Federal Reserve is signaling that they remain on track to raise interest rates in 2015, which means that the wait may be finally over. While the Fed may raise short-term interest rates in 2015, longer-term rates are Read more…

If, as many investment experts are saying today, volatility is the new normal in equity markets, it makes even more sense than ever to structure a portfolio that can help isolate you to some extent from these major market swings. Read more…

A few months ago we discussed keeping return expectations in check as higher valuations increase the probability of lower returns. We have no idea what the future holds and whether lower stock returns will come to fruition, but we do expect stocks to provide you with the best chance of outpacing Read more…