DIY Personal & Retirement Financial Planning
Do-It-Yourself financial and investment planning Excel spreadsheet software
The Standard & Poors 500 stock index is the most common equity index fund benchmark in the U.S. The S and P 500 tracks about 75% of publicly traded U.S. equity market asset value. The dominant issue in choosing among passively managed index mutual funds and ETF funds benchmarked against the S & P 500 […]
Can you really get free and objective investment advice, when you pay investment sales loads? Excessive investment expenses are one of the most significant barriers to your family’s lifelong financial security. Excessive investment costs are a plague on your personal financial planning. While financial services industry sales people tell you that you need to pay […]
On-line screening of mutual funds and ETFs: minimum requirements In this article, The Skilled Investor discusses minimum requirements for on-line mutual fund and ETF screening tools. This article summarizes our seven scientifically based fund selection criteria and reports on our survey of the capabilities of free on-line website tools to do screens using these criteria. […]
Avoid very large actively managed mutual funds Big actively managed mutual fund portfolio positions and higher percentage ownership of any company’s bonds or common stock are not good things for actively managed mutual funds. Nor, are these big positions and high percentages good for you. Large portfolio size constrains how efficiently an actively managed mutual […]
Choose sufficiently mature mutual funds and ETFs Investing in more mature equity and bond mutual funds and exhanged-traded funds (ETFs) allows you to evaluate the historical consistency of a fund’s record. On average, the future portfolio returns of more mature funds are probably no more predictable than for very young funds with a similar style […]