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    News

    Wal-Mart 401(k) pays retail – does your 401(k) also?

    “Merrill Lynch, with Wal-Mart’s blessing, was choosing mutual funds based on payments that the funds would make to Merrill Lynch,” says Braden attorney Derek Loeser of Keller Rohrback in Seattle, Wash. “This explains the anomaly of a $10 billion plan ending up with off-the-shelf retail funds that just so happen to share revenue.”
    Forbes magazine reports [...]

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Featured Articles

featuredimage Managing Inflation Risk

As the stock market has improved, more investors have shifted their concern from weathering the financial crisis to anticipating the ...

featuredimage Conversion Conundrum

by Bob Veres All of a sudden, it seems like everybody in the financial planning world is talking about Roth IRAs ...

featuredimage Active vs Passive: Moving Beyond the Debate

The first two columns in this series by Brad Steiman offered answers to frequently asked questions about active vs. passive ...

featuredimage Active vs Passive: Real World Issues

In his previous column, Brad addressed questions related to the theoretical aspects of market efficiency and active manager performance. In ...

featuredimage Active vs Passive: Man or the Market?

Bradley G. Steiman is Director, Head of Canadian Financial Advisor Services  and Vice President for Dimensional Fund Advisors Canada ...

Worldview Editorial Page

Education, Economics, and Self-Government

Larry P. Arnn, the twelfth president of Hillsdale College, received his B.A. from Arkansas State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School. From 1977 to 1980, he also studied at the London School of Economics and at Worcester College, Oxford University, where he served as director of research for [...]

Investing

When Risk is Your Friend

Why would anyone purposely buy the most risky, meaning volatile, asset class for their investment portfolio? Because, it will provide the highest expected return. How has that worked out for investors during 2009?
Great, actually. The Emerging Markets asset class is the most volatile broad asset class there is. How was the performance last year when [...]

4th Quarter (Age 60+)

Flee 401(k)s Fraught with Frightful Funds and Frivolous Fees

If your 401(k) investment options suck or if they are just plain too expensive and eat up your retirement returns while feathering the bed of the plan’s broker, move your money where you can control your investment options and fees.
Let’s say you now age 60, don’t plan to retire from your job until 2014, and [...]

3rd Quarter (Age 40-60)

Give Wisely

It is the season of giving and I think it is wise to give as wisely as possible.
Cash is often not the most effective thing to give. Appreciated securities are a more efficient choice.
I know the thought is that the market is down, how could there be appreciated securities out there? Well, you might be [...]

2nd Quarter (Age 20-40)

How to Lose Money in a Top-Performing Fund

by Bob Veres
An article in the December 31 issue of the Wall Street Journal makes a point that many of us in the financial planning world have long suspected.  It says that the CGM Focus fund was the top performing mutual fund, by far, over the past ten years, generating an annualized return of more [...]

Book Reviews

Brokerage Fraud: What Wall Street Doesn’t Want You to Know

Wall Street brokerage fraud isn’t anything new. It was around long before any of us heard of Bernie Madoff and his  ponzi scheme or Allen Stanford of The Stanford Group and their crimes or the plethora of other schemsters that have come to light now that FINRA has had the spotlight shined on them and [...]