4-minute Money Ideas

“Over My Dead Body!” Use a Will or Trust to Help Avoid Battles over Your Estate A will or trust can prevent long, expensive court battles over your estate assets. Find out which would be more appropriate for your situation.

Why a Stock’s Price Doesn’t Matter High stock prices may be intimidating, but they do not necessarily reflect the company’s value. Read here to learn why.

Growth vs. Income Investing: Is the Cost of Growth Too High? Retirement portfolio: Learn how to allocate growth vs. income investing, according to your risk profile.

Should Retirees Diversify Globally to Protect Their Savings? If you diversify globally will it improve the risk-adjusted returns on your investment portfolio? Learn how global diversification adds non-correlated assets to a retirement portfolio.

Do Simple Investments Generate Higher Returns? What type of investments yield the higher returns: complicated or simple investments? You may be surprised to learn that simple investments tend to have better, consistent returns. Read to find out why.

Should I Sell Out before Losing Money in a Stock Market Crash? Protect your portfolio from a stock market crash by reducing risk and producing more consistent performance through diversification

Are Emerging Markets’ Potential Returns Worth the Risks? Learn how diversification can help you manage the risks and returns of investing in emerging markets.

Will Dividends or Interest Boost My Retirement Savings More? Can dividends or interest boost your bottom line? Learn why both dividend- and interest-yielding positions have a place in your investment portfolio.

When Does Past Performance in Investments Matter? When analyzing a company, look at past performance and fundamental assets. Profile Investment Service’s most important asset is its dedication to clients.

3 Important Things to Do Before the New Fiscal Year There are 3 steps you should take at the end of every fiscal year. Find out why some calendar dates are important in personal finance.

I Don't Feel Inflation. Is It Hurting My Savings? Understand how inflation affects your buying behavior, spending patterns and savings.

How to Manage a Multicurrency Lifestyle Overseas retires and expat need to use multi-currency strategies to save money, reduce fraud risk, and optimize overseas investing.

Corporate or Treasury Bonds: Which Bonds Are Better? Corporate and Treasury bonds each have advantages. Which should you include in your investment portfolio?

What Is the Best Way to Reduce Risk in Your Portfolio? Learn how to grow your investments at a steady rate by reducing risk in your portfolio.

What Percentage of Your Retirement Portfolio Should Be Bonds? How should you invest your retirement portfolio if you want it to both grow and have little risk? Are bonds appropriate for preparing for retirement?

Does Investor Bias Make You Underperform the Market? By Douglas Goldstein CFP® - helping olim handle their U.S. investments from Israel A friend recently had a losing streak at the casino. Instead of walking away, he played more hands of blackjack. “I was determined to win,” he lamented. In fact, he was playing to recoup his losses. He was a victim of investment biases subconsciously affecting his decision-making. Gambler’s Fallacy – the belief that after a streak of losses his luck would turn – duped him into doubling his losses. A recent study of Major League Baseball umpires showed how biases are at work in all forms of decision-making. In 1.5 million pitches, umpires were less likely to call a strike if the previous pitch was a strike. Investor bias can lead you to make bad investing decisions. Biases are shortcuts in decision-making; you may, for example, increase your position in gold stocks because you have recently made a lot of money in gold, ignoring economic news that suggests gold prices are li

Should You Follow Investment Trends or Bet against the Masses? By Douglas Goldstein CFP® - helping olim handle their U.S. investments from Israel Today, many “investment trend” websites are enticing online traders to join. Investors who follow the trend – also known as “momentum trading” – invest in stocks based on rising market prices rather than company fundamentals. The strategy of following the investment trend performs best in a bull market. However, selling before the trend reverses is a skill that eludes most investors. When many investors buy the same stock, the market price can rise above the underlying value of the company. Eventually, as investors’ emotions stabilize, rationality may return, and prices fall into line with the fundamental value of the company (based on measures of revenues, earnings, etc.). Short-term momentum players who try to time market fluctuations seldom outperform buy-and-hold investors in the long term. The trend can be a false friend Herding behavior, whereby investors irra

Do You Look at the Risk-Reward Ratio of Your Stocks and Bonds? By Douglas Goldstein CFP® - helping olim handle their U.S. investments from Israel The risk-reward ratio is an attempt to quantify the amount of risk you need to take in order to get an anticipated return from any investment. If you were to only consider past returns when deciding whether to invest in stocks or bonds, stocks would appear to be the clear winner. From 2007 to 2016, stocks had an average annual return of 9% versus about 5% for 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds. If past returns are your only measurement of performance, then perhaps you should consider high-yield corporate bonds. This year, Harvard University’s endowment fund made its largest allocation to a high-yield corporate bond exchange traded fund (ETF), which had a one-year return (through March 2017) of 13.4%. Risk vs return Prudent investors know that past performance is not a guarantee of future returns, and instead of chasing last year’s returns they start by looking at their o

Can Optimism Increase Your Investment Returns? By Douglas Goldstein CFP® - helping olim handle their U.S. investments from Israel Are your investment returns determined by your worldview? Are people hardwired to be pessimists? Millions of years ago, if an optimistic caveman dismissed a rustle in a bush as the wind blowing, our ancestor may have ended up as a tiger’s lunch. As a result of this early conditioning, the part of our brain called the amygdala scans everything we see and hear for negative news. But according to Dr. Peter Diamandis, the founder of the coveted X Prize for Technology Innovation (and guest on The Goldstein On Gelt Show), this bias is more of a short circuit rather than an intelligent system design. He claims that in life and investing, it pays to be an optimist, as humans pay ten times more attention to negative news than positive news. Why optimism outperforms Technology is changing our lives for the better. A cursory list of human accomplishments over the past 100 years shows the futu

How to Safely Boost Returns in a Low Interest Rate Environment By Douglas Goldstein CFP®- helping olim handle their U.S. investments from Israel To the dismay of yield-seeking investors, interest rates remain at historic lows. Although rates on long-term bonds may begin to inch up, analysts generally expect that we may remain in a low-interest-rate environment for a while longer. So, what are income investors to do? It is important to understand the risks of reaching for higher yields and realize there may be less risky ways to increase income. It’s all about the Risk-Reward Relationship When investing for any purpose, returns always boil down to the risk-reward relationship. The laws of investing dictate that it is very difficult to increase your return without also increasing your risk. While you can increase your yield by investing in lower-grade or longer-term bonds, you also increase your risk should interest rates suddenly rise. To learn more about how bonds react to interest rates, watch a short video