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Yesterday one of the things I wrote about was the tax efficiency of ETF’s. Well, I wanted to add a bit more to that today, since I found a compelling little graph that highlights the power behind having tax efficient investments.

The burden of taxes is receiving more attention in recent years, particularly when it comes to the impact of taxes on portfolio performance. This is particularly so, with actively managed funds, where high turnover and potentially greater tax liabilities can really eat into returns. I will talk more to these points during mutual fund week, coming soon. (I wrote a post on the future of US tax rates too)

Continue Reading “Understanding the Tax Efficiency of ETF’s”

As I’ve stated before, I use ETF’s (Exchange Traded Funds) to construct the majority of our client portfolios. I started using ETF’s in the early 2000’s and have never looked back.

Since then, many different companies have brought 100’s of new ETF’s to the marketplace.

These days, there is no shortage of ETF’s to choose from… you can build a wonderfully diversified portfolio, using ETF’s of different sizes, styles, asset classes– from international ETF’s to a specific emerging marketplace (i.e. Brazil, Russia, South Korea, etc.)

So without further ado here’s 5 reasons I love ETF’s:

Continue Reading “5 reasons I love ETF’s”

I get phone calls and messages almost everyday from different mutual fund wholesalers (and internals), calling to introduce themselves to me. On the off chance they get through to me, this is how the conversation goes typically:

1. First, they introduce themselves and their company… then…
2. they present a sales idea involving their mutual funds
3. finally, they want to know where their funds fit into my business.

Do you know what my answer is?

Continue Reading “A brief conversation about ETF’s”

Mutual funds make up such a broad segment of the financial services industry, its hard to know where to start.

I had all these ideas last night that I wanted to write about, but today as I sit here I realize I can’t possibly incorporate them all into one or two posts.

I think, instead, in a few weeks time I will dedicate an entire week to looking at the mutual funds industry. It’s really the only way I can do it justice.

When it comes to mutual funds, there are so many interesting things to write about, including uncovering some dirty little secrets. In fact, I’ll dedicate the same amount of time to the annuities business, as well.

I got a little excited, a little ahead of myself today. Consequently, I just changed the post title to the one you see. It went from ‘Understanding mutual funds’ to what you see up there now. Well, lets begin to scratch the surface on the mutual fund biz then…

(I’m going to assume you know the basics about mutual funds, if you don’t and want more information Click Here.)

Continue Reading “Scratching the surface on mutual funds”