John Wasik

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Traders are nervous as Wall Street waits for the Federal Reserve to reveal its next quantitative easing move. Last week marked the third week out of the last four in which major indexes turned negative.

What if you ignored the market’s mood, though? Would it make a difference?

If you can find managers focused on buying and holding the best stocks – no matter how the rest of the market is behaving – you might reap higher gains over time.

C. Thomas Howard, professor emeritus at the University of Denver, has found that managers who invest in what he defines as the “best markets” for overall stock performance and the stocks that represent the “best ideas” will outperform market indexes. Howard identified hundreds of companies that fit his criteria and could have been bought at bargain prices.

Examining a period from April 2003 to March 2013, Howard found in a recent paper that his “best idea” group of 400 stocks, which includes Google, Ethan Allen Interiors and MasTec, gained almost 17 percent, compared with 9 percent for the Russell 3000 Index.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – For Eugene Fama, the University of Chicago professor and father of modern finance, the key to investing is relatively simple – stay in a low-cost, diversified portfolio to capture virtually all market returns with a mix that’s right for the amount of risk you can stomach.

Yet few people really believe that will work – they don’t like staying still – so they chase active managers or pick stocks themselves, usually buying and selling at the wrong times. They deceive themselves into thinking that they can outwit the smartest managers in the world and their costs won’t sink them.

With the stock market flattening out and perhaps taking a breather from its first-half surge, it’s worth taking a look at Fama’s basic tenets to avoid such bad behavior. (I recently had the chance to speak to him during a conference at the university sponsored by Loring Ward, an investment manager based in San Jose, California.)

CHICAGO (Reuters) – If a tree falls in the forest, can you make a little money? As the U.S. housing rebound continues, you can watch the value of your real estate rise. In addition you can reap gains from resource companies that own and process timber.

Since most U.S. homes are still framed with wood, timber becomes a more valuable commodity as new construction booms. Home prices gained the most in seven years in March, according to a recent S&P Case-Shiller housing index report. Housing starts in April rose 16 percent over the previous month with new building permits up 14 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

North American sawmills are running at the fastest pace in six years, up nearly 7 percent over last year, according to CIBC World Markets, a Canada-based investment bank. Growth in China is also contributing to the rebound. More than 60 percent of log exports from the Pacific Northwest head to the People’s Republic.

CHICAGO, June 3 (Reuters) – If a tree falls in the forest,
can you make a little money? As the U.S. housing rebound
continues, you can watch the value of your real estate rise. In
addition you can reap gains from resource companies that own and
process timber.

Since most U.S. homes are still framed with wood, timber
becomes a more valuable commodity as new construction booms.
Home prices gained the most in seven years in March, according
to a recent S&P Case-Shiller housing index report. Housing
starts in April rose 16 percent over the previous month with new
building permits up 14 percent, according to the U.S. Census
Bureau.

North American sawmills are running at the fastest pace in
six years, up nearly 7 percent over last year, according to CIBC
World Markets, a Canada-based investment bank. Growth in China
is also contributing to the rebound. More than 60 percent of log
exports from the Pacific Northwest head to the People’s
Republic.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – For investors who piled into bond funds this year, the past week has been an abject lesson of how to get bruised in short order.

An uptick in yields smacked bond prices, which move inversely to yields. Funds investing in high-yield and long-maturity issues got hit the worst. Yields on 10-year Treasury Notes hit a peak of 2.23 percent, the highest since April of last year, before dropping to 2.16 percent on Wednesday.

The pre-June bond swoon is a harbinger of things to come. The U.S. economy is heating up after years of decline, which will trigger greater demand for credit and lower bond prices.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – For investors who piled into bond funds this year, the past week has been an abject lesson of how to get bruised in short order.

An uptick in yields smacked bond prices, which move inversely to yields. Funds investing in high-yield and long-maturity issues got hit the worst. Yields on 10-year Treasury Notes hit a peak of 2.23 percent, the highest since April of last year, before dropping to 2.16 percent on Wednesday.

The pre-June bond swoon is a harbinger of things to come. The U.S. economy is heating up after years of decline, which will trigger greater demand for credit and lower bond prices.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – With the S&P 500 Index up more than 16 percent this year and health care, its top sector index, up 24 percent, it seems counterintuitive that so many investors are clinging to the low single-digit returns in bonds.

Money certainly isn’t gushing into stock mutual funds, even though the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index have hit a series of record highs.

Between April 24 and May 1, investors pulled more than $4 billion out of U.S. equities while pumping almost $1 billion into bonds, according to the Investment Company Institute, the trade group for mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and other U.S. investment companies. The following week, more than $7.3 billion was invested in bond funds, compared with only $363 million in U.S. stocks.

CHICAGO, May 29 (Reuters) – With the S&P 500 Index up more
than 16 percent this year and health care, its top sector index,
up 24 percent, it seems counterintuitive that so many investors
are clinging to the low single-digit returns in bonds.

Money certainly isn’t gushing into stock mutual funds, even
though the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard
& Poor’s 500 Index have hit a series of record highs.

Between April 24 and May 1, investors pulled more than $4
billion out of U.S. equities while pumping almost $1 billion
into bonds, according to the Investment Company Institute, the
trade group for mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and other
U.S. investment companies. The following week, more than $7.3
billion was invested in bond funds, compared with only $363
million in U.S. stocks.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The golden days of summer might also brighten the portfolios of dividend lovers.

With most large corporations swimming in cash as the economy and earnings improve, adopting a dividend-centric strategy looks even more promising for moderate-risk investors.

Dividends, the portion of earnings that corporations pass along to shareholders in the form of quarterly payments, are becoming more generous. Not only do they reward long-term shareholders with higher total return, they are proven inflation hedges.

By John Wasik

CHICAGO, May 24(Reuters) – The golden days of summer might
also brighten the portfolios of dividend lovers.

With most large corporations swimming in cash as the economy
and earnings improve, adopting a dividend-centric strategy looks
even more promising for moderate-risk investors.

Dividends, the portion of earnings that corporations pass
along to shareholders in the form of quarterly payments, are
becoming more generous. Not only do they reward long-term
shareholders with higher total return, they are proven inflation
hedges.