Actor John Voight was interviewed on television this afternoon. He read what I thought was a very powerful quote. Then, I heard who it was he was quoting. A man who has become one of my favorites, Mr. Thomas Sowell, who is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Here [...]

by Tamar Frankel Historically securities brokers have been viewed as salespeople with special legal responsibilities:  Treat customers fairly, follow special rules regarding the customers’ money and securities, and recommend to customers only suitable investments.  Brokers offered liquidity by creating markets in certain securities, actions also subject to special rules designed to ensure customers were treated [...]

Widely cited as the father of the efficient market hypothesis and one of its strongest advocates, Professor Eugene Fama examines his groundbreaking idea in the context of the 2008 and 2009 markets. He outlines the benefits and limitations of efficient markets for everyday investors and is interviewed by the Chairman of Dimensional Fund Advisors in [...]

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 [...]

There are probably as many perceptions of what a financial Advisor is, or should be, as there are people who hire them. Let me take a little time and a few pixels to comment about this. For those who value an Advisor for their ability to deliver positive investment returns year after year, irrespective of [...]

James L. Davis, Vice President, Dimensional Fund Advisors Investors are concerned about inflation, and rightly so. Average annual inflation in the US between 1929 and 2008 was nearly 3.3%. A dollar at the end of 2008 had about the same purchasing power as eight cents did at the beginning of 1929. Protecting the purchasing power [...]

Sir John Templeton is quoted as saying, “The best time to invest is when there is blood in the streets.” Of course, he was speaking metaphorically. His statement is very applicable to our circumstances today. Many would say we are in the trough of this recession. The trough doesn’t mean the “bottom of the market”, [...]

The Treasury Department’s bank investments are paying dividends. But saying they have earned $6 billion for taxpayers, as Tim Geithner did, is a stretch. Tim Geithner may have jumped the gun by saying taxpayers have earned money on TARP. NEW YORK (Fortune) — The markets are on a roll, but it’s still a tad early [...]

Anyone who has been to a fortune teller who reads tea leaves will tell you that if you stare at the patterns long enough, the remnants in your cup can magically begin to look like the vision of the future the fortune teller is foretelling. In the realm of investing, the same is true with [...]

HISTORICAL stock charts seem to show that it took more than 25 years for the market to recover from the 1929 crash — a dismal statistic that has been brought to investors’ attention many times in the current downturn. But a careful analysis of the record shows that the picture is more complex and, ultimately, [...]