Outlook

Behind B1 U.S. Pursues Sweeping Insider-Trading Probe [WSJ] – “could eclipse the impact on the financial industry of any previous such investigation” Gus Lubin: “If the charges stemming from this probe have the same scope as the probe, it will shake Wall Street to its core.” NY Post: “the probe could […]

You’ve heard about the pending European bailout of Ireland – but why is happening now? CNBC’s John Carney asks “why would the Eurocrats demand a bailout of Ireland when Ireland insisted it didn’t need one?” It has more to do with their immediate needs than Ireland’s:

Find the time for John Cassiday’s lengthy New Yorker feature that asks if Wall Street adds any real benefit to society, given that “[f]or years, the most profitable industry in America has been one that doesn’t design, build, or sell a single tangible thing.” Cassiday quotes anonymous econoblogosphere star The Epicurean Dealmaker, […]

Tough times for everyone but looks like it is beginning to get particularly challenging for those overcharging, under performing funds. It was always bound to come, but given the recession investors are talking with their feet and the incumbents are beginning to find life difficult. Two recent stories only go […]

 Following on from a previous post about useful tools for investors we continue to be approached about new offerings asking us to promote them to our community. We have no association with any of these organizations but thought we might highlight a few more to follow up on directly if […]

The Financial Times ran an interesting piece this weekend about Investors worldwide pulling almost $100bn out of equity funds in the first three months of this year – a record shift, and part of a long term trend away from the US market. The article goes on: The outflows also […]

The current edition of The Economist has a special report on asset management.  The first article, by Philip Coggan, The Economist’s Capital Markets Editor, highlights how the fund management industry has and continued to do very well, but for itself.  Here’s a quote from the introductory paragraph: Imagine a business […]

Here at Covestor we are frequently being approached by companies who have valuable offerings for self-directed investors. As such we thought we would start a series of blog posts highlighting these. We are not able to partner with all of these organizations and so hopefully these posts are of value […]

We received an E*Trade marketing email on friday advertising a new fund.  The subject line sounded sensible: "how to survive an up-down market". But looking closer, there was no great insight. The conlcusion was to diversify. Less likely to help you to survive the market, than to better correlate to […]

An interesting round-table discussion was posted on 12.10 in Pensions and Investments (The Journal of International Money Management) about the changing face of value of investment management firms. It highlights how despite the credit crunch, there is continued client demand for alternative investments (i.e. hedge funds) which is driving both […]

We recently met with Journalist Robin Raskin, whose daughter has been working on a project that we thought might be of interest to our members. We don’t recommend, or have a view on your investments at Covestor, but this seemed worthy of highlight.  MicroPlace allows you to lend money to […]

The London Times this weekend highlighted a great report by Bestinvest, the Indepedent Financial Advisor, on the huge growth in the amount of money sitting in underperforming funds: "The number of poor-performing, or “dog”, investment funds has nearly doubled in the past 18 months, according to a new study. Bestinvest, […]