Tag: S&P 500 Index

3 Fees That Are Bleeding Your Retirement Assets

Per the US Department of Labor, a 1 % higher 401k plan fees and expenses could reduce your balance at retirement by 28% over a 35-year career. That’s a big deal!  As not all employer’s match, people are looking to the financial advisors for answers (and ironically paying hefty fees to find ways to reduce fees).

Continue reading

Bonds as a choice of investment for your 401k/403b/457 plan?

Bonds are debt obligations of the issuer to return the principal amount with interest to the investor. Bonds are issued by both domestic and foreign entities such as a government or corporation.  So it can be differentiated based on geographies, just like equities. Refer to our previous blog on equity Equity Funds (right to ownership). But the more common differentiator for bonds is time horizon or duration.

Continue reading
3 Pillars of Equity funds Market capitalisation Investment style Geography

3 Tenets of Equity Funds

A typical retirement plan may have anywhere between 15 to 30 investment options. In certain cases, the list may contain 100+ options. Honestly, the longer the list, the harder it is for employees to make a sensible choice. Keeping a tab and trying to understand so many options is not an easy task and requires a lot of time. And that dilemma sometimes results in inaction and you may end up parking your hard earned money in assets that don’t offer a good return or charge higher fees.
Let’s take an example of a retirement plan that has 15 options. A typical line up consists of 7-8 equity funds,4-5 bonds and 1-2 options focused on specific assets like real estate, oil & gas etc.
Let’s dig deeper into equity options. The first question in your mind may be ‘why 7-8 equity funds?’ The idea is to offer choice and diversification so that you don’t pull all your eggs in one basket.

Continue reading

Is Bitcoin on a slipperly slope?

oday, the price of Bitcoin has jumped to $ 11,823, 14.47% increase in a day. Yesterday morning, the price went below the psychological $10k mark. The markets reacted to the news coming out of South Korea that their Government may ban cryptocurrency trading. China is also looking into fake blockchain platforms.
How do people participate in Bitcoin marketplace? It is not easy to wrap your head around all the aspects of Bitcoin trading, however, it is not much different from a product like Gold.

Continue reading