The U.S. Government may be forced to shut down some time this morning. In Minnesota, we have a history of similar government shutdowns. On midnight, July 1, 2011, the State of Minnesota shut down. All state government spending and operations stopped. All state...
I have met with several individual Minnesota company 401(k) retirement plan participants in the last two weeks. I ran into the diversification monster in each meeting. Diversification has been widely sold to individual investors. Investment advisors and financial...
It’s official. My daughter does not like one of her teachers this fall. She is distressed that she has to sit in class with this teacher each school day until the end of the semester. Every student has a story about a teacher that they did not like. In my daughter’s...
Study after study that I read about individual stock market investor behavior arrives at the same conclusion. Individual investors have historically poor sense of stock market timing. Four years ago, the U.S. stock markets were at the lowest levels than in the...
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve surprised every economist who watches its every move. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that the Fed would continue to purchase U.S. Treasury and Mortgage-backed bonds in order to keep interest rates low. The now famous QE3 program...
Earlier this month, U.S. interest rates rose to the highest levels in two years. Two years is an investment lifetime ago. Most Minnesota bond market investors don’t remember a time when U.S. interest rates have not been artificially low. The Federal Reserve began...
