Featured entries from our Journal

Details Are Part of Our Difference

Embracing the Evidence at Anheuser-Busch – Mid 1980s

529 Best Practices

David Booth on How to Choose an Advisor

The One Minute Audio Clip You Need to Hear

Tag: wsj

Index Funds turn the big 4-0!

bogle2 (1)

Jack Bogle is a hero in our world. He launched the Vanguard 500 Index fund forty years ago in 1976. The initial reception was unimpressive, raising only $11 million, which was far short of the $150 million target. Critics called the index fund “un-American” and boring when compared to the active funds that were heavily advertised.

The S&P 500 Index fund gathered assets slowly in the beginning, but now is the second largest mutual fund in the world, with assets of over $255 billion. The total assets in all index and exchanged-traded funds is now $5 trillion. Investors have seen the evidence and are voting with their dollars. Happy Birthday Index Funds!

To read the full article please click here.

Happenings in the Evidence Based Investing World

Hill Investment Group likes to stay on top of the evidence-based investing world.  Below you will find three links to relevant and entertaining commentaries that have been shared with us.

Trio

Jared    |   Jason    |   John

  • Jared Kizer thoughtfully explains the Brexit and its effects, or lack thereof in this article on MultiFactorWorld.
  • Jason Zweig addresses the benefits of value and tilting in his Wall Street Journal article “Everything Is More Expensive Than It Looks”
  • John Oliver humorously describes the sad but true state of many actively managed retirement plans in his show Last Week Tonight on HBO.  Please know in advance, there is a bit of lewd language and subject matter in this clip.

Taxes Matter—A Lot!

One thing is certain when it comes to investing, taxes make a big difference in after-tax returns.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal, “Individual Stocks vs. Index Funds: The Next Frontier,” discussed direct indexing as an advanced technique to potentially save on capital gains taxes. Instead of owning a single investment representing a sector or asset class, direct indexing means buying the hundreds or thousands of stocks individually that make up that asset class. While it’s a useful technique to aggressively harvest tax losses, the complexity involved is likely too much for most investors.

Carolyn Geer with the WSJ quotes Fran Kinniry, investment strategist for the Vanguard Group, as saying that “most investors would be better off simply holding tax-efficient investments, such as broad-market index funds and municipal-bond funds, in taxable accounts, and holding tax-inefficient investments, such as taxable bonds, in 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts.”

At Hill Investment Group, we agree. Here are our three main strategies to help increase after-tax returns:

According to Vanguard research, the first category alone can add up to 0.75% in annual returns, depending on the mix of investments.

Featured entries from our Journal

Details Are Part of Our Difference

Embracing the Evidence at Anheuser-Busch – Mid 1980s

529 Best Practices

David Booth on How to Choose an Advisor

The One Minute Audio Clip You Need to Hear

Hill Investment Group