by The Investor
on March 6, 2009
A quantitative easing professional going about his business
A few months ago, nobody but a few U.S. Federal Reserve groupies had ever heard of quantitative easing. Yet today we’re told it’s the only thing that can save the financial system from meltdown.
Indeed, the U.S. authorities have been moving towards quantitative easing for months, while the Bank of England has just got a £75 billion warchest to try quantitative easing in the UK.
Quantitative easing sounds like a laxative, which is appropriate since:
- Everyone is talking a lot of bull about it
- It could land us all in the deep stuff
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by The Investor
on March 5, 2009
When it comes to investing, stocks and shares get much more column inches than corporate bonds. Rightly so in my opinion, since over longer time periods stocks have outperformed corporate bonds.
As we’ll see below, there are good reasons to expect that outperformance to continue. Yet almost every book on asset allocation will tell you to diversify your portfolio into corporate bonds.
To decide if that’s right for you, it’s important you understand the following about stocks vs corporate bonds.
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by The Investor
on March 4, 2009
Update: Voting is now closed, and we’re into round 3. Thanks everyone!
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by The Investor
on March 4, 2009
Vertical diversification is when your investment portfolio is spread across different types of assets.
Cash, government bonds, corporate bonds, property and shares can each be expected to behave slightly differently and so produce different returns, as circumstances change.
For instance, government bonds may soar when stock markets crash, because frightened investors sell their shares to seek the security of government debt.
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