ABOUT ONCE A WEEK, someone will say to me, “I don’t understand bonds.” Sometimes, they’ll state it in stronger terms: “I don’t like bonds.”
Fundamentally, bonds are just IOUs. If you buy a $1,000 Treasury bond, you’re simply lending the government $1,000. The Treasury will then pay you interest twice a year and return your $1,000 when the bond matures. That part is straightforward. What’s more of a mystery is why we should own bonds and what we should expect from them.

COULD SOMETHING like the Great Depression happen again? During that unpleasant episode, the stock market dropped 90%, unemployment rose to 25% and gross domestic product fell 30%. In making a financial plan, is this a scenario we should worry about?
While no one can predict the future, it’s worth taking a closer look at one key variable: the Federal Reserve. Today, the Fed has a reputation for helping smooth out economic cycles. But those who worry about Depression-like scenarios point out how powerless the Fed was to prevent the collapse that occurred in the 1920s and 30s.

I MAY BE WRONG, but I’m pretty sure Vanguard Group doesn’t have a secret plan to control the U.S. banking system. Not everyone is so confident, however.
There’s a federal regulation that no investor can buy more than 10% of the shares of a U.S. bank without regulatory approval if it’s seeking to “control” the bank. Thanks to the popularity of its index funds, Vanguard funds collectively owned 12.5% of State Street’s shares as of June 30.

DIVIDENDS ARE a seemingly mundane topic. But like many areas of personal finance, it’s one that still generates debate. The most common question: All else being equal, if one stock pays a dividend and another doesn’t, shouldn’t an investor prefer the one that pays the dividend? We’ll examine this question, and then broaden the lens to look at dividend strategies more generally.
To better understand how dividends work, let’s look at Procter & Gamble.

WHEN WAS THE LAST time you got scammed? Mine was about a year ago, when I threw more than chump change into a red-hot newfangled exchange-traded fund called the JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF (symbol: JEPI).
Now, JEPI could be the name of someone’s pet poodle, but it’s actually one of the more misunderstood high-income products in the burgeoning world of actively managed exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Just how red hot is the fund? Around for only four years,

MONEY MANAGERS Raj Rajaratnam and Joel Greenblatt share a number of similarities. They’re almost exactly the same age. Both received business degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, and both started well-known hedge funds. But the similarities end there.
During the 10 years that Greenblatt operated his fund, Gotham Capital, it delivered returns averaging 50% a year, versus 10% for the S&P 500. Thanks to his success, Greenblatt retired from full-time work in 1994 at age 37.

IF YOU WORKED AT Vanguard Group, you felt like a kid in a candy store when it came to picking investments. There were so many well-run, low-cost funds to try. Yet my favorite fund wasn’t offered as an investment option in the Vanguard 401(k) plan. Ironically, it’s the fund that made Vanguard’s reputation.
Vanguard opened its S&P 500 index fund (symbol: VFIAX) in 1976. This first commercially offered index fund was designed to earn the U.S.

IT’S ONLY BEEN relatively recently that mankind has come to rely on banks, brokerage firms and investment companies to build wealth.
Tangible property—land, gold bars, houses, livestock and so on—was the standard of wealth just a couple of centuries ago. The Bible frequently cites cattle to signify someone’s wealth. If folks had “cattle on a thousand hills,” they were a billionaire in that era. Wealth was something that you could physically lay your hands on.

MARKET OBSERVERS have been predicting a recession for the past two years. Why? They’ve pointed to what’s known as an inverted yield curve, when short-term interest rates are higher than long-term rates. Historically, this has been a bad omen for the economy. The yield curve has been inverted since 2022—and yet, despite that, the economy has remained strong and stock markets have continued to hit new highs.
That all changed on Aug. 2, when a little-known indicator known as the Sahm rule began flashing red.

BONDS MAY NOT BE the most interesting investment, but they generate their fair share of debate. Especially after 2022’s rout, when total-bond market funds dropped 13%, many investors wonder how best to proceed. An open question: Does it make more sense to buy individual bonds or opt for bond funds?
To answer this question, let’s start with a simple example. Suppose you’d invested in Vanguard Group’s total-bond market fund (symbol: BND) on Jan. 1,

AMONG THE FINANCIAL topics grabbing investors’ attention, inflation for many years was near the bottom of the list. In fact, between 2010 and 2019, inflation averaged just 1.8% a year, and the Federal Reserve was looking to lift that rate. Throughout 2019, the Fed lowered its benchmark interest rate multiple times, citing inflation that was running below its preferred level of 2%.

But just a few years later, in the midst of the pandemic, all that changed.

IN RICH DAD POOR DAD, author Robert Kiyosaki touts the virtues of owning real estate as a way to reach financial independence. He explains the difference between how his father handled money and invested in his education, versus his friend’s dad, who gained his wealth by investing in businesses.
There’s controversy over whether this is a true tale or just a literary device to explain how to invest in real estate.

SUPPOSE YOU WANTED to construct as simple an investment portfolio as possible. What would it look like?
Many argue that, for stock market exposure, you could go with a single fund, one that tracks the S&P 500 index. The S&P index offers broad diversification and tax efficiency, plus it includes the largest and most successful companies, making it a popular choice. But it’s not perfect.
The S&P 500, like many market indexes, holds stocks in proportion to their size,

A NEW TYPE OF MUTUAL fund has captured investors’ attention. Known as buffer funds, they’re so appealing that one industry analyst has referred to them as “candy.” Why? As The Wall Street Journal describes them, buffer funds offer investors “the chance to chase stock returns while also protecting against a potential market slide”—a seemingly ideal combination, especially for those in or near retirement.
But funds like this are complicated—they rely on options strategies.

FROM THE COLOSSEUM in Rome to the palace at Versailles, look around Europe and you’ll find artifacts of once-great empires. What happened to them?
Each faced its own challenges, but there was also a common theme: They had poor financial management and became overburdened by debt. That’s why a recent analysis in The Wall Street Journal—titled “Will Debt Sink the American Empire?”—is worth our attention.
In 2024, the federal government’s budget deficit will come in at $1.9 trillion.