A quick note via email from a reader who’s attending the big Morningstar Investment Conference this week: I’m at the Morningstar conference in Chicago. There’s a direct correlation between quality of trinkets and trash and the fund’s expense ratio – and it’s inversely correlated to performance. Example: That liquid alts manager you recently mentioned with a terrible…

In this morning’s Equity and Quant Strategy note, Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Savita Subramanian makes the case that not all US stocks have grown more expensive in the first half of this year, despite the S&P’s 5% gain. In fact, she believes that the sectors where companies benefit from high interest rates still represent…

The Bank of America takeover of Merrill Lynch remains a heartbreaker to the old school Herd guys and this week’s business card dust-up is just one more example. Long story short, the bank has been shrinking the size and prominence of the bull mascot on Merrill brokers’ business cards since 2009 and slowly adding their…

An immigrant from Central America, she retired from AT&T in 2003 with an IRA set up by Tarr. Afterwards, they often discussed investments over coffee at Lew’s kitchen table, as her prized green parrot squawked in a cage with a sweeping view of the parched hills surrounding San Francisco. Lew started her withdrawals at $2,000…

Today’s terrifying thought – the Fed is worried enough about a big disruption in the bond market that they’re actually considering a bond fund exit fee, which, in theory, might help slow down a race for the door should rates rise too rapidly. Yeah, okay. It’s hard to believe that this kind of thing would…

Today Willie Nelson releases his 48th full-length album, Band of Brothers, comprised almost entirely of original songs. Willie’s 81 years old and has been at it for more than six decades now. His last two records were both incredible – Heroes was loaded with great covers while To All The Girls… reprised some of his…