index investing Archives | Wealthfront Blog Personal Finance & Investing Insights Wed, 12 Jan 2022 01:12:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.wealthfront.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/cropped-wave-logo-transparent-hi-res-500x500.png index investing Archives | Wealthfront Blog 32 32 Is Indexing Worse Than Marxism? https://www.wealthfront.com/blog/indexing-worse-than-marxism/ Tue, 22 Nov 2016 04:07:16 +0000 http://www.wealthfront.com/blog/?p=7094 Index funds have always been ridiculed by active mutual-fund managers.  Two recent events have fueled a new set of criticisms.  The mid-year 2016 Standard and Poor’s report on index fund performance showed that the superiority of low-cost indexing, whether in the form of mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs), has increased over time.  Over the […]

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]]> The Right Way and the Wrong Way to Benchmark a Diversified Portfolio https://www.wealthfront.com/blog/benchmark-diversified-portfolio/ Fri, 29 Jul 2016 18:29:30 +0000 http://www.wealthfront.com/blog/?p=6902 One of the biggest challenges for an investor is to determine how well her diversified portfolio is performing. The two most common benchmarks featured in published advice are: S&P 500 A 60/40 Stock/Bond portfolio Unfortunately, most published advice is incorrect. That’s because it usually encourages comparison to an irrelevant index or too generic of a […]

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]]> The Stock-Pickers’ Market Myth https://www.wealthfront.com/blog/stock-pickers-market-myth/ Tue, 03 Feb 2015 02:05:54 +0000 http://www.wealthfront.com/blog/?p=4947 Earlier this month, Barron’s ran a cover story that made the case that 2015 was likely to be a “stock pickers’ market.” Active portfolio managers were expected to “recapture their lost glory” as interest rates were predicted to rise. Unfortunately, we have heard similar claims at the start of every year. In early 2014 The […]

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]]> Has Indexing Become Too Popular? https://www.wealthfront.com/blog/indexing-become-popular/ Thu, 15 Jan 2015 16:13:48 +0000 http://www.wealthfront.com/blog/?p=4930 Indexed investment strategies (passively holding portfolios that simply buy and hold all the securities in a particular market) continue to increase in popularity. Currently more than 35% of investment portfolios use index funds to gain exposure to the U.S. stock market.1 And according to Morningstar Investment Research, more than 55% of the moneys invested in […]

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]]> Indexing and the Curious Case of Alibaba ($BABA) https://www.wealthfront.com/blog/indexing-curious-case-alibaba-baba/ Tue, 21 Oct 2014 15:38:26 +0000 http://www.wealthfront.com/blog/?p=4821 It has now been 40 years since I published the first edition of A Random Walk Down Wall Street. The book, about to come out in its 11th edition, had a very simple message: Investors would be better off buying a broad-based index fund that simply held all the stocks in the market. As a […]

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]]> Indexing and the 2014 “Stock-Picker’s” Market https://www.wealthfront.com/blog/indexing-2014-stock-pickers-market/ Thu, 21 Aug 2014 15:22:46 +0000 http://www.wealthfront.com/blog/?p=4587 In January of this year it was widely believed 2014 would be a “stock-picker’s” market. While the S&P 500® index of large U.S. stocks produced an extremely generous return of more than 30% in 2013, an indexing strategy was deemed unlikely to be effective in 2014 — or so active managers argued in an attempt […]

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