Alpine Dynamic Dividend — My Dividend Generator
As I stated before, my investment objective is to generate passive incomes from investments. To reach that goal, I am trying to build a portfolio with dividend-paying stocks and mutual funds/ETFs. Among my dividend generators, one that I particularly like is Alpine Dynamic Dividend Fund (ADVDX). I started investing in ADVDX in April 2006 [...]
Model Portfolios Built with ETFs (IV) – The Intelligent Asset Allocator
The fourth segment of the Model Portfolios Built with ETFs series, is making an appearance at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity as a guest article. In this part, I discussed how to build an all-ETF portfolio based on a model in the book, The Intelligent Asset Allocator by William Bernstein, that consists of, among other asset [...]
Triple My Money: How Long and What Does It Take?
You are probably familiar with the Rule of 72, which tells you when the one dollar you invest today will be worth $2 once you have a rate of growth. If your annual rate of return is R%, then it will take you (72/R) years to double your money. For instance, for a 6% return [...]
How to Use Morningstar to Research Mutual Funds
Morningstar is my choice for mutual fund research because it provides a broad array of data for me to analyze a fund in cost, return, and risk. This post is to discuss what kind of information I will consider when evaluating a mutual fund.
If you already have a specific fund on your mind and want [...]
Mutual Fund Basics: Asset Allocation Funds and Balanced Funds
I am starting an irregular Mutual Fund Basics series where I will discuss some basic concepts in mutual fund investing. Though I have a larger portion of my taxable investments in stocks than mutual funds, I feel I know mutual funds better than stocks (and yes, I am still learning). Actually, I already have a [...]
Model Portfolios Built with ETFs (III) – All About Asset Allocation
This is the third segment of the Model Portfolios Built with ETFs series. In the first two parts, I discussed two model portfolios, the Couch Potato Portfolio and the Bogel Head Portfolio, and considered possible choices to build these portfolios with ETFs instead of transitional mutual funds.
In this part, I continue the discussion with [...]
Understanding M*’s Mutual Fund Risk Measures: Alpha, Beta, and R-squared
Morningstar is the my primary website for mutual fund research. When I look for a mutual fund investment (mostly actively managed funds), not only I am concerned with a fund’s past performance and costs, but its risk factors as well. Before getting into the details, let’s first see how risk is defined in finance.
According to [...]
Model Portfolios Built with ETFs (II) — The Boglehead’s Guide To Investing
This is the second part of the Model Portfolio Built with ETFs series, which convert Jonathan’s Model Portfolios into all-ETF portfolios. In this part (the first part can be found here), I looked at the four example portfolios in The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing [Amazon.com affiliate link] and examined ways to reconstruct these portfolios [...]
Model Portfolios Built with ETFs (I) — Couch Potato Portfolio
Last month, Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog ran a series on model portfolios which covered some (so far six) popular portfolios based on various investment philosophies. When these model portfolios were originally developed (some are more than thirty years old), the main investment vehicles were mutual funds, where were apparently the only choices at that time. [...]
Dollar-Cost Averaging: For Higher Return or for Lower Risk?
In the past couple of days, I did some further study on VFINX after I took a look at the market value and shares owned at the beginning of 2007 if I started investment in January 1988 with four different investment schemes (here’s the previous post). In this study, I use VFINX as a dollar-cost [...]
