Good reads from around the Web.
Next week my co-writer The Accumulator is back from his month-long blogging holiday (as opposed to a real holiday – we know he only enjoys short breaks to abandoned seaside towns in the North).
To celebrate his return, I’ve decided to reformat these regular Saturday links in order to separate the passive and active articles.
While The Accumulator tells me he enjoys reading (and presumably chuckling over) the active stuff – in fact, he thought I shouldn’t turn the blog into a passive-only site when I mooted it earlier this year – I do worry the active links are noise for sensible index investors focusing on the really important stuff like asset allocation, cutting costs, and counter-party risk. And getting out more.
So for a while at least, I’ll try splitting these out, for both the blog links and the mainstream media links, to facilitate easier scanning.
Doing so does remind me how few passive articles there are for UK investors. No wonder our passive investing HQ is so popular!
Come back on Tuesday for an update on our Slow & Steady Passive Portfolio.
From the blogs
Making good use of the things that we find…
Passive investing
- Jack Bogle on the evolution of bond index funds – Amazon
- Buying individual bonds versus bond funds – Rick Ferri
Active investing
- Hornby PLC: The stuff of nightmares – The Red Corner
- Go-Ahead Group: A high yield defensive stock – UK Value Investor
Other articles
- Reduce spending or grow income? – Consumerism Commentary
- Selling down principal: Market timing? – Can I Retire Yet?
- Student jobs and the tax implications – Ethan’s Money
- A short brush with gambling – Objective Wealth
- Funds can’t even manage cash well – Simple Living in Suffolk
- Ermine’s wife has a new food blog – Simple Eating in Suffolk
- Trendy Kath Kidston-style wallpaper on-the-cheap – Miss Thrifty
Product of the week: Halifax has extended its seven-year mortgage deal to all customers. There’s a write-up on The Independent website.
Mainstream media money
Highlights from the wall of noise…
Passive investing
- Swedroe: Don’t bother being cute and trading bonds – CBS
- Missing nothing: Hedge funds made zilch from shorting – Reuters
Active investing
- The secret of Warren Buffett’s success – The Economist
- Direct Line IPO looks priced to go – FT
- A semi-automated summary of company’s annual results – iii
- Malkiel and the cyclical P/E ratio – Institutional Imperative
- How a drunken broker sent oil to 8-month high in 2009 – CNBC
Other stuff worth reading
- Demographics: The gray tsunami – Discover
- The bright side of a century of inflation – Motley Fool (US)
- Get ready for auto-enrollment in pensions – The Guardian
- The case for investing in Russia – The Independent
- The British economy is GREAT – FT Alphaville
- Neuroscience: The marketplace in your brain – Chronicle
- My first million: Anthony Thomson, Metro Bank – FT
Book of the week: Father-of-index-funds John Bogle has written a new book, The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation
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Comments on this entry are closed.
Yes! Love the new format. Time for me to make a coffee and get my active investing on 🙂
It’s a useful tweak. Good to see some active investing titles to remind you why you’re still a passive investor.
Thanks for the hat tip! And some of your [cough] readers might scroll down to the active posts. We know we shouldn’t, but… I’ve got the years 2002-2007 to catch up on. Only when I chose to fly into the storm did things turn up. The darkest hours are those before the dawn…
I’m tickeld by Monevator Towers kitted out in CK wallpaper ;). I picture somewhere on the top floor of The Shard not quite the penthouse suite, and the poor postman lugging a few rolls of #6 up 😉
@ermine — Hah! 🙂 One of the nice things about Facebook (click the box in the right hand margin!) is it reveals the diversity out there in the Monevator masses. I may not be a flowery bedspread kind of guy but Miss Thrifty’s blog is fab and I thought that post pretty clever… 🙂
Many thanks for mentioning my new (food) blog. I’m really touched 🙂
I really enjoyed the article on Neuroeconomics, “Neuroscience: The marketplace in your brain”, fascinating stuff….
Bit scary to see Bogle peddling the latest fad – he usually steers well clear of that sort of thing. I would have been expecting him to tell investors to stay the course and stick with equity.
I suppose the good news is that now corporate bonds are well and truly being sold to the masses, you know the party’s over and it’s time to get out!
Yes, I’m starting to get nervous about bonds but money is still flooding into the funds, so I can afford to hold on for another 6-12 months.
I’ve been picking up small holdings in each of the new retail bonds for a while, though I stagged a couple (i.e. I sold very soon after issue for a small profit). I think the rate/longevity/duration picture is fairly attractive, compared to the yield on cash and bond funds/treasuries, though my approach is not properly diversified (but then again, holdings are small to very small). I like the lack of dealing fees in buying new issues, too.
It would only take the FTSE 100 sub-5,000 to see me sell the lot and swap even that small allocation back into equities though.
All of the bad news of last summer only just pushed the FTSE 100 below 5000. What level of bad news would it take to push it back there now, and given that bad news, would you still be happy buying?