Posts by Darryl H

Whether you are super wealthy or just the average retiree, you might be concerned about outliving your current income or preserving your wealth. To avoid outliving your current retirement income, you first need to determine how much of your nest egg you need to invest to generate the amount of income you need over your…

Investors want both low volatility and the highest possible returns. Unfortunately, that option is not always available but not because there are no strategies but because of investor temperament. Choosing an investment strategy that is suitable for an individual investor is not as easy as it seems. Whether an investor manages his or her own…

Alternative investments are generally used by investors to diversify their investments beyond the typical asset classes of stocks, bonds, and cash. Alternative investments are usually private equity funds, private REITs, private real estate funds, hedge funds, or venture capital funds. The hope of diversifying with these alternative assets is to reduce volatility and increase your…

In recent years financial pundits have declared that the 60/40 portfolio is officially dead and can no longer provide a stable stream of income from its component parts, 60% stocks and 40% bonds. The rationale behind declaring the death of this commonly used allocation is that bond yields are so low that allocating 40% of…

For the average retail investor, trying to understand the financial markets can be extremely overwhelming but it should not be. The first thing that any investor should understand about financial market commentary distributed through any form of media is that it is often not relevant to most personal situations. The only use for such information…

For all Investors, whether retail or institutional, fundamentals should be driving the bulk of your decisions when it comes to stock picking. The goal is to buy stocks whose potential for growth is greater than the broader market, otherwise you should just invest in a broad market index like the S&P 500. Our goal here…

For most investors, simplicity is better. However, far too often investors have either too many investment strategies or no strategy at all. One of the major drawbacks of having multiple equity strategies is that it is not necessary, confusing, and can be more costly. It is understandable why a family of mutual funds would have…

First, what is a back-test? A back-test is going back in time to evaluate an investment strategy that you think can provide returns greater than the broad market as defined by the S&P 500 or another popular index. There are software programs out there that allow you to back-test a strategy. However, if you have…

The debate continues about whether it is possible to outperform the S&P 500 over time. At Investoristics, we think the answer is yes especially if your approach is based on common sense and is grounded in investment fundamentals. In a recent article, we discussed our view on the number of stocks most investors need for…

How many stocks do you need to diversify your portfolio for adequate protection.  Well, it depends.  If you know what you are doing, say some, then you only need a dozen stocks or less in your portfolio.  Warren Buffett is famous for saying that “Diversification is protection against ignorance.”  We won’t get into that debate,…