Tag Archives: returns

Joe Davis and Andy Clarke collaborated on this post, the result of a conversation about research that Vanguards Investment Strategy Group has conducted on the adoption and economic impact of “great ideas.”

I just finished watching a new documentary on 401(k) plans. It was intended to be an exposé of sorts. The program combined criticisms of the U.S. retirement system and financial services industry with sinister music for added drama. After I …

If you first learned how to think about saving and investing as I did, from a passbook savings account, bond funds can seem like a world turned upside down. I was reminded of this a few days ago when an …

Along with about 50 million others, I’m a product of Generation X. I had a Dorothy Hamill haircut, spent my weekends at the roller-skating rink, and grew up watching Madonna on MTV (back when she was more controversial and they …

My recent comments about the performance of retirement accounts elicited a wave of comments from Vanguard investors about poor stock market returns. Here are a few thoughts in response.…

There continues to be a lot of focus on the consequences of today’s low-rate environment. In such an environment, one of the most important things an investor can do is economize on the cost of the financial services they’re buying …

A few months ago, my wife and I opened a small savings account for our young children to help teach them the power of saving. Compound interest. All that good stuff.

We talked about taking their pennies, dimes, and birthday …

There’s been a lot of back and forth about the differences between the posted performance of a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) and the returns actually realized by investors taking into account cash flow.

Reading the discussion around this, …

I recently had the chance to reread A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel as part of a work-related book club.

Having read the book in a business school class very early in my career, I promptly ignored …

Like everyone else, I’ve been reading (well, skimming) reams of year-end—and in some places, “decade-end”—economic summaries. There’s lots of talk about black swans, financial “Frankensteins,” lost decades, and fundamental changes in investor behavior.

Black swans are old news, and I’ve …