ETF’s - Are They Performing Better in a Bear Market?
It is notorious that most of the US mutual funds have had to incur losses last year (many of them between -30% and -20%, some of them even lower). And the story got even worse - due to their massive losses, most of these mutual funds were forced to sell big chunks at their assets at a loss and reimburse the capital gains to the investors. Who in turn incurred even more losses because the of the capital gains taxes.
This was very bad for an investor, indeed. And those burned investors started to looking for alternatives. One of them, close in concept, is to invest in ETF’s (exchange traded funds). Unlike mutual funds, ETFs incur zero capital gains until an investor actually sells his shares. While turnover in an ETF’s holdings can be high, it is done through in-kind exchanges of one security for another rather than through selling and buying fractions of the funds assets.
Well, there is no shortage of the mish mash news today, in a nice avalanche of disasters hitting the once largest economy in the world.
I was reading today some analysis about the euro currency prospects in the incoming day somewhere on 
Let’s say that the trillion or so of toxic assets would face two choices - go bankrupt or be offered for free to willing persons. What should the U.S. government do?
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner held yesterday a speech on the foreseen bailout measures which failed to reassure the markets. The Dow Jones fell 200 points from the start of his 30 minute speech to the end and finished yesterday 382 points behind the day before. Indeed, stock traders made him pay for the lack of specific details in his speech.
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler LLC will be some of the biggest beneficiaries if the new bailout bill will be passed by the Senate. The bill intedns to create a provision of $11 billion which would allow the U.S. taxpayers to deduct for tax purposes interest paid for auto loans and mortgages.
The recent financial crisis has some interesting effects too. As you are just reading this investment blog, a thief could use somewhere in the world a counterfeit credit card with your full name printed on it.
I was a few days ago reading an advertisement from Fisher Investments (because it’s not worth I won’t bother to reproduce the link here).
Well, remember that a few days ago we at doitinvest were complaining about the different methods of converting various currencies one to another?