Posts Tagged ‘portfolio’

Screening is…

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Screening is the way you evaluate potential investments based on certain criteria.  While the criteria is different for different objectives (for example, respect for human rights when looking for socially responsible companies or low price-earning ratios for value stocks), the process of making the list smaller based on specific criteria is the same.

Screening is an integral part of socially-responsible investing (SRI). It refers to the way you evaluate potential investments based on certain social, environmental, and good corporate governance criteria. When you screen companies for social responsibility, you’re checking to make sure that they have respectable employee relations, strong records of community involvement, excellent environmental impact policies and practices, respect for human rights around the world, and safe and useful products.

A diverse investment portfolio. With butter and sprinkles.

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

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from Let It Dough! by Christoph Niemann (NYTimes)

You can invest in lots of different things – stocks, bonds, mutual funds, currencies, cows. (For real! They’re called commodities and they’re really weird.) And you can invest in this stuff in the U.S. or in almost any country in the world.

But here’s the trick: you want to have a diverse mix of all these things, so you don’t lose all your money if, say, the U.S. economy crashes or all the cows go on strike.

Diversification is a way to reduce that risk by creating a portfolio with a wide mixture of different investments. In basic terms, it means “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

Mmm. Sprinkles.

The Point Of No Return

Monday, July 19th, 2010

It seems that no funds are consistent enough to weather the worst economies, no matter how reliable they seem.

  • In the wake of the economic crisis, more people are investing in “absolute return” funds - portfolios that supposedly deliver gains in any kind of market.
  • Firms advertise these funds as low-risk investments because they focus on short duration and high quality securities.
  • It seems, however, that the name of these funds might be misleading. In recent months they have been gaining little, and in some cases even been posting losses.

Facts & Figures

  • The Aston/New Century Absolute Return exchange-traded fund lost 9.51% in June

Best Quote

“You just have to be careful that absolute return doesn’t turn into no return.” – Mr. Tuttle, Financial adviser

Diversification is…

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

Diversification is a way to reduce risk by creating a portfolio with a wide mixture of different investments. In basic terms, it means “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

A Portfolio is…

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

A portfolio is a collection of investments owned by an individual or institution.