Bonds

Forbes Media Forbes’ November 2013 cover on how Michael Dell won the war to take his company private. “Dell Can’t Lose,” read the cover of Forbes Magazine on November 18, 2013, as we chronicled how personal computer billionaire Michael Dell relented against Carl Icahn to take his company private in what was dubbed “the nastiest tech buyout ever.” If

Traders and financial professionals work ahead of the opening bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, June 19, 2018 in New York City. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty In recent years, it’s been understandably tempting to focus on holding just stocks in your portfolio. After all, the S&P 500 is up four-fold from the lows

AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano On July 9th, Argentina will celebrate its 202nd birthday. The biggest spoiler during the festivities will be the beleaguered peso. It’s not the first time the peso has been a spoiler. Since its founding, Argentina has been burdened with numerous economic crises. Most can be laid at the feet of domestic

Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg Looking for a value play in the telecom field? One decent contender is Verizon. Why? It has continued to be a pure play, largely eschewing the fancy media content strategies of rival AT&T, which just got the judicial go-ahead to buy Time Warner for a princely $85 billion. The second largest US

Shutterstock Preferred securities took a beating in the 2008-2009 Great Recession. Once-bitten, twice-shy income investors may begin to shun the asset class once they conclude that the next economic contraction is imminent. History suggests that those who do so could be making a costly error. In the table below, the shaded segment furthest to the

Photographer: Jeff Zelevansky/Bloomberg News The Madison Square Garden Company has always been a tantalizing stock for those who believe in the ever-growing value of high-end sports and entertainment. The company, controlled by the Dolan family and CEO James Dolan, owns Manhattan’s iconic Madison Square Garden and two of the sports world’s most valuable franchises, the

Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam attends the annual shareholders’ meeting of the Swiss banking group on April 28, 2017 in Zurich. (MICHAEL BUHOLZER/AFP/Getty Images) High-frequency trading has been able to produce outsized returns for banks that have put most of their eggs in this one basket. Wall Street firms tend to be all-in on electronic

A protester holds a sign reading “the pain of those dying due to lack of medicines won’t be televised,” during a demonstration by HIV-positive patients and their relatives against the lack of medicines and medical supplies in Caracas on June 14, 2018. Photo by Federico Parra/ AFP. The Socialists United of Venezuela and its president

Traders work in the S&P 500 options pit at CBOE Global Markets Inc. in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., on Friday, Dec. 29, 2017. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg Two sources of demand that contributed to the massive stock rally of the last few years are drying up. Strong buying came in the last few years from the very

Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images A lot of people are peeved at Elon Musk, one of this era’s premier entrepreneurs. After all, the chief executive of electric car pioneer Tesla has plenty to answer for. Consider: The red ink is mounting. While the company’s revenue is expanding—because, let’s face it, there’s a demand for

(Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) If you knew with 100% certainty that an economic recession was coming, would you alter your long-term asset allocation? If your answer is yes, then proceed to the next question. If you knew that trying to time the market correctly is virtually impossible, would you try to do it anyway? If

Photo credit: VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images Despite strong US corporate earnings, corporate debt supply is inching up to historical highs. As rates rise and profits start to cool, these debt burdens will start to pinch. At this point in the cycle, it’s time for investors to start thinking about downside scenarios and rationalizing their portfolio holdings.

Shutterstock These exchange-traded funds own bonds with maturities averaging between 3 and 9 years. If you want a portfolio that mirrors the whole bond market—defined to exclude junk, foreign, tax-exempt and inflation-protected bonds—ETFs from four vendors will serve you well. The total-bond-market offerings from State Street, Schwab, BlackRock and Vanguard, in the third through sixth

Shutterstock These exchange-traded funds own municipal bonds, with coupons mostly exempt from federal taxation. Until a few years ago ETFs were a poor choice for investors seeking tax-exempt income. Their expense ratios ate up too large a chunk of your coupons. That changed in 2015, when cost-conscious Vanguard added a muni-bond offering to its ETF

Shutterstock These exchange-traded funds own bonds with maturities averaging less than 3 years. If you want to limit your risk without erasing your yield, a portfolio of bonds maturing over the next three years is a way to do it. The cost winner here, iShares 1-3 Year Credit Bond (CSJ), has a duration of not

Wall Street. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg. SoftBank continues to make waves by underwriting the valuations of a growing number of turbocharged “unicorns” carrying private values north of $10 billion. It recently bought 15% of Uber at a $48 billion valuation. In partnership with GM, it paid $2.25 billion for a 19.6% stake in Cruise Automation. Masayoshi Son’s conglomerate

Shutterstock Amid all the hoopla about AT&T’s getting a court’s go-ahead to swallow Time Warner, let’s not forget that the telecom giant faces a threat that isn’t going away: cord cutting. Maybe the addition of Time Warner’s celebrated content will help the onetime Ma Bell stem that tide, but people will continue to find ways

By Simone Baribeau Puerto Rico’s federal oversight board may be overseeing the commonwealth’s finances, but it is doing everything it can to ensure that financial information about the commonwealth remains out of everyone else’s sight. Examples of the attempts of the Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB), as the federally appointed board is known, to

NEW YORK, NY – JUNE 12: Anthony Field, Emma Watkins, Lechlan Gillespie, Simon Price and a guitar player of ‘The Wiggles’ perform at The Empire State Building on June 12, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images) What to make of markets that appear to be going nowhere If you were a

A secure retirement plan needs secure income sources. But figuring out how to sustain an income stream throughout retirement relies on an important component: having adequate savings to begin with. For more and more Americans, annuities are part of the solution for growth and income. Certain annuities, like fixed annuities, can be used to replace

A strong dollar is never good for emerging markets. But BNP Paribas doubts it will be strong for long or that its strength will deter investors from reteurning. (Shutterstock) The worst is over. It hasn’t exactly been a bloodbath now, has it? Despite the hemming and hawing over a strong dollar being bad for non-U.S.

Calvert Impact Capital A classroom in one of the many schools across India financed by Varthana In 2013 an ambitious new company called Varthana was founded in response to one of India’s most intractable problems: education. India’s school system has the distinction of being the world’s largest and also one of the world’s worst; a

Shutterstock Most “high bracket” investors love the idea of tax-free muni bonds. But they aren’t sure where to buy them, and often end up using exchange traded funds (ETFs) as their vehicle of choice. Bad idea. Muni ETFs provide a smooth but unfulfilling ride. The popular iShares National Muni Bond ETF for example has rewarded

Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference remarks this past week raised all kinds of questions about the Fed’s interest rate policy. Fed policy, and indeed the entire economy, are now poised at a critical inflection point. If things play out according to plan, the Fed will guide the U.S. economy to a trajectory featuring slightly

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference June 13, 2018 in Washington, DC. After a two-day meeting the Chairman Powell announced that the Fed will increase interest rates by quarter of a percentage point. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) The Federal Reserve is tightening monetary policy. U.S. bond yields are rising.

Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, says their quantitative easing program (QE) ends in December. Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images. Guess what? Your bank loan is going to cost money from here on in. So is your margin account and a new mortgage. It’s not the early 2000s or the 1990s, but one

Oilfield services giant Schlumberger just presented an updated outlook for the current quarter, now expecting earnings per share to grow in a range of 10-15%. It also said that revenue growth for the period will be driven by international activity. Shares of SLB fell on the news, however, last seen trading at $68.60, putting them

Traders and financial professionals work ahead of the closing bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on June 13, 2018 in New York City. Following news today that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates a quarter percentage point, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 119 points at the close. Photo

Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News The Institute of International Finance (IIF) has released a worrisome report about the state of global debt, which includes this note about U.S. corporate debt: U.S. non-financial corporate debt hit a post-crisis high of 72% of GDP: At around $14.5 trillion in 2017, non-financial corporate sector debt was $810 billion higher

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is about to raise interest rates again. Will the Fed throw a monkey wrench in the U.S. growth machine? Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images. The Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday. No one is surprised. But as the Fed continues apace on its long