Mutual Funds

Life and annuity insurers have been revamping their variable annuity product offerings to better fit a post financial crisis environment. As discussed in recent blog entries , variable annuity product revamps basically boil down to increasing prices and benefit reductions. The unanswered question is what impact the product changes will have on variable annuity sales. According to a recent Wall Street Journal Article, variable annuity sales grew at an 11% annual rate from 1995 through 2007...

A recent study from John Bogle indicates that retail investors are making miserable buy and sell decisions with exchanged traded funds (ETF). The study looks at the difference between between an ETF's return and the returns of the average dollar invested in those funds. In other words, the study looks at the difference between the fund's return over a particular time frame and the return to the average investor in the fund who made buy and sell decisions over that same period. The study...

John Bogle maintains his firm belief that a buy and hold strategy combined with low cost index funds results in the only reasonable approach for the individual investor: "Of course buy and hold is the thing to do. A genius like Jim Cramer hasn't gone anywhere for 10-14 years and few [managed] mutual funds have beaten the market indices during the same period. It's just market timing, and your good market timing is my bad market timing. [We invest within] a totally illogical system where we move...