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The HuffPost on Tuesday published a story claiming President Trump owned a share in a company that manufactured hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug the president and others have touted as a possible treatment for coronavirus. The story, titled “Donald Trump Has Stake In Hydroxychloroquine Drugmaker: Report,” argues that Trump “reportedly owns a stake in a company that produces hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug he has repeatedly touted as a coronavirus treatment even though his experts say there’s no strong evidence it works.” The story goes on to cite a New York Times story that Trump “has a small personal financial interest” in...

For the diversified portion of countless investors' portfolios, the key choice has been ETFs vs. mutual funds for years now. For many investors, the choice boils down to this: Exchange traded funds tend to be cheaper than mutual funds. So shouldn't investors simply stick with ETFs? X In fact, shouldn't you dump your mutual funds for ETFs?You might be tempted to switch since many financial advisors and independent investment strategists now focus on using ETFs rather than mutual funds to build clients' portfolios. That's mainly because of cost, flexibility, transparency and tax efficiency:ETFs cost less. Most ETFs have lower...

WASHINGTON—The top Democrat on the Senate’s tax-writing committee wants to tax long-term investments like other types of income, raising rates and requiring the wealthiest people to pay taxes on their unrealized gains each year. The plan from Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon is the latest proposal from Democrats in Congress and on the presidential-campaign trail to boost taxes on the wealthy in a bid to address what they view as the problems of economic inequality and provide a funding stream to pay for new programs. While the specific proposal has little chance to become law anytime soon, such ideas could...

France’s finance minister unveiled Friday a decree that would make it the first nation in Europe to allow the trading of some non-listed securities using the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies. The decree, presented by Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire to the government, should enter into force by July at the latest and will apply to non-listed financial securities that EU law doesn’t require to be traded via an intermediary, a market worth potentially more than €3 trillion. In particular, this includes shares in mutual and hedge funds, negotiable debt securities, and unlisted stocks and bonds. Blockchain technology debuted in...

My wife and I have an account with one of the large mutual fund companies. We were just informed that the state is getting ready to seize the account because it is considered abandoned. We have had the fund for about 12 years with the dividends and capital gains automatically deposited in our bank account. After calling the fund we were told that even though there have been approximately 150 automatic transactions on the account over the last 12 years they did not count as activity and so the state is preparing to seize the account. We were told we...

John Bogle has been a thorn in the side of active stock pickers ever since the 1970s.As an evangelist of index fund investing, Bogle has been preaching for decades that on average, stock pickers can’t outperform the market over the long term.What’s most annoying is that — unlike most investment gurus — he’s been consistently right.Over the past 25 years, only 38.6% of active funds have outperformed the broader S&P 500 on an annual basis.And good luck with finding the fund that outperforms the S&P 500, year after year, over that time period, and in advance.Active stock pickers’ consistent underperformance...

To oversee this process, Dodd-Frank created the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), made up of the heads of the financial services regulatory agencies. The council claims very broad power to designate certain activities (like asset management) or companies and products (including mutual funds) as systemically important and subject them to Federal Reserve bank-style regulation, including leverage and capital requirements. And the council is doing just that – first with banks, then insurance companies and now, potentially, mutual funds. President Obama’s “independent” insurance expert on the council issued a blistering dissent when it designated Prudential – the nation’s second-largest life insurer...

I spend a lot of time browsing FR, and have noticed a lot of FReepers have a lot of knowledge/opinions pertaining to finances. There also appears to be a good number of Freepers who are about retirement age with a good conservative viewpoint. Taking into consideration current events and the steady devaluation of the dollar, my question to the experienced Freepers out there is this: Let's say you're 25, are debt free, make no car payments, earn O-2 pay and are unmarried. You don't have any retirement accounts but are apprehensive of starting an IRA or contributing to a Thrift...

Wall Street investors hungry for advance information on upcoming federal health-care decisions repeatedly held private discussions with Obama administration officials, including a top White House adviser helping to implement the Affordable Care Act. The private conversations show that the increasingly urgent race to acquire“political intelligence” goes beyond the communications with congressional staffers that have become the focus of heightened scrutiny in recent weeks. White House records show that Elizabeth Fowler, then a top ­health-policy adviser to President Obama, met with executives from half a dozen investment firms in 2011 and 2012. Among them was Kris Jenner, a stock picker with...

Rahm Emanuel Writes to Mutual Funds Urging them to Blacklist Gun CompaniesPosted By Bryan Preston On January 30, 2013 @ 11:29 am In Politics | 33 Comments The tyrant of Chicago is at it again. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is now pushing mutual funds to divest and blacklist gun manufacturers for the crime of opposing the Obama regime’s gun-control efforts.Emanuel’s statement on his assault on the First and Second Amendments: “Just like the banks and pension funds, I believe that these Mutual Funds can exert an enormous amount of influence by taking a stand against gun manufacturers that continue to refuse...

Isn't freedom great? If you've held a company-sponsored 401(k) or 403(b), you know that your company gave you a false sense of freedom. They said that you were "free" to pick from any one of the handful of mutual funds that they picked for you. Picking from their choices doesn't seem like much freedom, but maybe you took the extra step and opened an IRA. Now that's freedom. With IRAs opened outside of your company, you have the choice of just about any investment option on the market. Ninety-four billion dollars is invested in self-directed IRA accounts, where many...

Dear Dave, My wife and I are 70, and we have $950,000 in annuities in the market, plus $68,000 in our emergency fund. The only debt we have is our mortgage. I’m considering converting our stocks to a money market account to lower the risk. What do you think?HowardDear Howard,There are two sides to this. One is the asset allocation method, where as you grow older you move away from equities like mutual funds toward safer, more conservative investments like money markets, bonds and certificates of deposit. This is standard financial planning theory.I disagree with that theory, and here’s why....

Baby boomers and others worried about the lack of money in their 401(k)s and IRAs are day trading within their retirement accounts. Americans worried about running out of money in their golden years are trying a new investment strategy: day trading their retirement funds. Disillusioned with the conventional buy-and-hold approach, baby boomers are anxious to improve their retirement prospects after two punishing bear markets in the last decade. Some people are trading the mutual funds in their 401(k) plans more frequently. Others are venturing into options. And some aggressive investors have begun day trading their nest eggs — all in...

Any minute now, any minute, we promise, investors will regain all their confidence in this non-charade of a market which reflects all the fundamental realities of the economy. Just not yet: last week saw the 29th consecutive outflow from domestic mutual fund flows, which incidentally surged to $2.8 billion from the $677 million outflow the week prior. Sarcasm aside, nobody except for CNBC's Fast Money is putting money in the market. Well, so are the Primary Dealers, and to an extend the Hedge Funds. Although now that the letter no longer have access to pervasive insider info courtesy of expert...

The go go days of the 1990s was the heyday for growth oriented stock picking fund families like Fidelity. Their star manager system - led by legendary Peter Lynch - and huge funds (Lynch's Fidelity Magellan was once the largest in the country) made them the most prominent fund family in America. But the past decade has not been so kind as "close your eyes, throw a dart, long only is the way to go, and stocks just go up almost every year in a magical way" investing of 1983 to 1999 came to abrupt end in 2000. [Feb 5,...

Investor Fund Flows Have Never Been This Bearish Since Lehman Collapsed Vincent Fernando, CFA Jun. 6, 2010, 8:45 AM It's a bit of a surprise that stocks didn't fall further. The last four weeks were actually the worst 1-month outflows since Lehman collapsed in 2008, as shown below in red: From a fund flow perspective, investors in mutual funds have now pulled money out of U.S. stocks during 2008, 2009, and now year-to-date in 2010. To us this should be read as a substantial contrarian indicator. The investor panic was enormous during the last four weeks, and on a multi-year...

Rarely in our 87-year history have we turned to USAA members to weigh in with elected representatives on an issue of great importance. But, we are now. The U.S. Senate currently is considering legislation (S.3217) that would impose new rules on the nation's financial services industry, including USAA. As the leading provider of financial services to America's military community, USAA supports financial services reform. However, the current Senate bill would disproportionally impact USAA because we are a unique and fully integrated association. USAA is not like the banks and other companies that helped bring down our economy, and we never...

Charles Schwab lost a big court decision last week in a case that has significance for investors in mutual funds. A federal judge ruled that Schwab violated the law when its YieldPlus (SWYSX) ultra-short bond fund failed to get shareholder approval before loading up on mortgage-backed securities. When the market for those securities collapsed, the fund lost 36% — a nasty surprise for investors who believed that YieldPlus was a safe alternative to cash. Left to decide is the amount of damages the investors should receive; lawyers say California investors alone lost about $170 million, the rest about $800 million....

It's been a great year for many mutual fund investors. Standard & Poor's Equity Research reports that 165 equity mutual funds are up at least 47% through Oct. 31, or at least double the return of the S&P 500. While investors in those funds should feel euphoric, S&P is quick to issue a warning to investors who might fall victim to those seductive returns. The S&P report, issued Friday, indicates that many of the best-performing funds relied on short-term strategies and paid little attention to the underlying fundamentals of the stocks in their portfolios, which could lead to a performance...

US no longer insures your money-market fund, but that’s good news Withdrawing federal insurance is part of a broader exit strategy from the government's emergency supports for the economy, expected to gather steam this year. ### Savers take note: Your money-market fund is no longer insured by the US Treasury. These mutual funds, which earn interest for millions of Americans in brokerage or 401(k) accounts, rarely run into financial trouble. Almost always, they are able to maintain a reliable value of $1 per share. “Almost” is the key word, though. Last year, one of the original money-market funds, the Reserve...