AS YOU STRIVE TO DO well, should you also strive to do good?
We’re seeing a boom in environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing. For instance, according to a recent Morningstar report, there are now 534 index mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) around the world that screen their holdings using ESG criteria. Together, these funds have almost $250 billion in assets—more than twice the sum they had three years earlier.
ESG investing offers a way to invest in funds that consider issues such as the use of natural resources,

MUCH OF THE MEDIA commentary about investing positions the individual as a heroic figure. We are, it seems, all supposed to deploy our expertise in a battle to beat the market, with bragging rights going to the winners.
Problem is, this framing is based on three myths.
Myth No. 1: Your job is to outwit the financial markets.
Underlying this is the notion that the key to investment success is to have rare insights and expertise not shared by anyone else,

WHY DO I AVOID individual stocks today? I’ve previously written about the big loss on a broker-recommended stock that led me to manage my own investments.
That loss, however, didn’t deter me. In my early days as a do-it-yourself investor, I mainly bought mutual funds, albeit too many of the high-fee actively managed variety. But I still had an interest in picking individual stocks.
In fact, it was part of my investing heritage. My father had always invested in individual stocks.

WELL, IT SOUNDED good. Academic theory and nearly a century of investment experience supported the argument that small-cap value is the most promising market segment over the long term, since it offers the superior risk-adjusted return that comes with owning both neglected small-cap shares and shunned value stocks.
But as legendary economist John Maynard Keynes observed, in the long run, we are all dead. In my 36-year investment career, both small- and large-cap value have lagged large-cap growth.

AT 82 YEARS OLD, investment manager Jeremy Grantham has seen his fair share of market cycles. And as a U.K. native living in the U.S., he has the interesting perspective of an outsider. In a recent interview, Grantham shared his unvarnished view of the U.S. market. “American capitalism has become fat and happy,” he said. The U.S. stock market is in a bubble that will likely burst within “weeks or months.”
I don’t believe anything should be judged over the span of a single week.

IT’S HALLOWEEN, but not much frightens me—at least financially. My portfolio is broadly diversified, I have the insurance I need, and I have enough set aside for retirement. The highly improbable could happen, but I’m not going to lose sleep over that.
Still, even for those of us in decent financial shape, I see two key reasons for concern. We have no control over either—which is why they might seem scary—but we can take steps to limit the potential fallout.

TESLA JUST REPORTED financial results for its most recent quarter. For the fifth time in a row, it announced a profit. This was notable for a few reasons. Among them: Tesla’s increasingly strong performance again raises the question of why it’s been excluded from the S&P 500-stock index.
By way of background, the S&P 500 includes almost all of the 500 most valuable publicly traded companies in the U.S. But Tesla’s stock isn’t included,

THEY WERE GURUS and gunslingers. Market mavens. Stock pickers and sector bettors. Over in the bond market, there was even a king. They were star fund managers—but most were shooting stars, destined to crash.
Yes, we’ve had managers like Peter Lynch, Will Danoff and Bill Gross, whose long-term returns did indeed beat the indexes. But for every winner like them, there have been—statistically speaking—seven who failed. Between 74% and 93% of funds in a variety of broad categories—small-cap,

STOCKS WENT INTO a freefall earlier this year, as I’m sure you recall. But all of a sudden, on March 23, everything changed. The market turned around and, just as quickly as it had dropped, it rebounded. Remarkably, the U.S. stock market is now in positive territory for the year.
What happened on March 23? The situation with the virus didn’t get any better. And it wasn’t Congress or the White House. What happened was that the Federal Reserve issued a statement.

IT SEEMS EVERYONE has an opinion about the markets—and they are, of course, entitled to those opinions. But here’s the irony: Some of the most successful investors have also been among the least dogmatic in expressing their views.
Perhaps it’s the humility gained from repeatedly trying and failing to second-guess the financial markets. These veteran observers of markets are a stark contrast to the swashbuckling managers who flaunt their confidence about the likely direction of stocks and bonds—a sales strategy they use to encourage people to buy products they don’t need.

SOME FAMILY MEMBERS recently asked me to help them find a financial advisor. As luck would have it, soon after, Barron’s published a perfectly timed article, “America’s Best RIA Firms,” which listed 100 highly ranked registered investment advisors (RIAs). Similar lists are available from CNBC and the Financial Times.
It was time for me to get to work. Who wouldn’t want to recommend a “top” firm to his or her family?

WHAT DO HIGHER corporate profits truly mean to investors? Or, put another way, this 77-year-old neophyte wants to know, “How is investing in stocks different from gambling?”
Don’t get me wrong, I invest in stocks and I understand they’re the best way for most of us to grow wealthy over time. What I don’t get is, “Why? What causes a stock to increase in value?”
I’ve researched the question and what I find is a lot of talk about earnings per share,

LET’S START WITH the obvious: If you buy high-quality bonds today, you’ll collect very little yield—and there’s an excellent chance you’ll lose money once inflation and taxes are figured in.
Take Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF, which aims to track U.S. high-quality taxable bonds. It yields some 1.2%, which is below the 1.7% expected annual inflation rate for the next 10 years, and the amount you pocket will be even less after deducting taxes.

MY HUSBAND AND I have been investors for a long time. For us, it’s an interesting hobby and we’ve learned a lot along the way, plus we’ve made some money.
Friends and family sometimes ask what we’re doing and whether we can help them. Neither of us has any sort of certification as a financial advisor or any sort of formal training in investments. We can just imagine what a wrong suggestion would do to a friendship or family relationship.

WITH THE ELECTION just a month away, many investors are worried about what lies ahead. Does it make sense to lighten up on stocks now, in advance of the election? I see at least four reasons not to sell:

Despite the polls, we can’t be sure what the result will be.
As we saw in 2016, nobody knows how the market will react to that result.
Even if the market reacts negatively, the effect may be temporary.