Investing

Colleges and universities have become more comfortable over the past several years with using gift annuities as a funding source. A gift annuity allows the college to secure a lump sum donation from a donor. In exchange, the donor receives lifetime income payments from the college. The ability to donate a lump sum while maintaining a source of income from those funds can be very attractive to the donor. This charitable donation funding approach has been growing steadily over the past several...

Speaking at an industry conference this past week, Vanguard founder John Bogle suggested that all money managers should be subject to a federal standard of fiduciary duty. Bogle believes that some money managers have been taking advantage of their positions at the expense of the shareholders whose interests they presumably represent. Bogle also suggested that the mutual fund industry is leaning too heavily on past returns and, as a result, that Monte Carlo simulations should be abandoned...

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...