Osbon on the Money

Recent violent swings in the equity markets – more down than up – have spawned familiar rallying cries from every corner of the investing world, including “Diversification is Dead!” and “Buy and Hold is Obsolete!” Is it really time to throw out the fundamental tenets of passive investing? John Bogle says No.

At the department store when a product is perceived as overpriced or of questionable long-term value, sales typically decline. Shoppers vote with their feet and go to a different aisle or a different store. But that’s not happening in the US Treasury market. Even with record low yields and record high prices, bonds continue to move. Where are the bond…

Pretty much everybody wants to own Apple (AAPL). And why not?  AAPL is up 55 times since its March 2003 low of $7 and has greater cash reserves than the US government. Plenty of investors are lamenting that they didn’t take a bite of Apple years ago. But here’s the good news. If you are an indexer, chances are you…

Now there’s a headline you haven’t seen recently.  It comes courtesy of Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and general partner of the venture capital firm, Andreessen-Horowitz.  What does Marc see that so many others don’t?  Find out in his very interesting article “Why Software is Eating the World.”

At times during the last two weeks, it’s seemed that the investment world has been spinning on its head. It can make you feel like everything has changed. But has it? First of all, did your goals change in the last two weeks?  Possibly, but probably not. No matter what happens in the stock market day to day, most investors…

All eyes, some red with market fatigue, are on the Dow and other benchmarks. After 10 days of staggering declines, I imagine there are still many investors with their fingers poised on the panic button, ready at the next sign of trouble to get out of stocks. Many have left the party already. Nobody wants to own stocks right now.

Last week, some readers expressed surprise that stocks, as represented by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, had outperformed gold over the last 40 years. In that timeframe gold is up 45x while the Dow rose from 888 to 12,600 – a 14x return.  Nice, but not the 53x we attributed to the Dow. What gives?

Last week I talked about faith-based investing as represented by the $9 trillion US Treasury securities market, and the promise to repay backed by the “full faith and credit” of the United States government.  This week I would like to note the 40th birthday of a faith-based investment that dwarfs the Treasury market in size: the dollar.

I can hardly wait for Wednesday morning, August 3rd.  By that date at the latest we will know what Congress has decided to do about raising the United States debt limit. The “full faith and credit” of the United States and its AAA rating are at stake. We are all waiting to know what will Congress do and how. Will…