In the same way that you can pay personal bills directly from your bank account, you can have money automatically transferred to a mutual fund to purchase shares. It involves signing a form that authorizes the investment of a fixed amount of money on a regular basis. It can cause your local broker to call you pitching a stock you've never heard of. Its availability may even cause you to choose one brokerage over another. When professional Wall Street types are interviewed, they usually offer up their forecasts as to where the market is headed next how far up or down from the present level.
Many analysts believe the prospects for a severe bear market are on the rise.
If you need to cash out your stock investments in the next few years, you undoubtedly hope they're wrong. It was probably inevitable that someone would wonder aloud how the bulls would do against the powerful grizzlies that roamed wild in the area. Last year, for the first time since 1990, bonds offered investors a better return than stocks. Many analysts believe the same could very well be the case again this year. Perhaps it's time we dusted off our understanding of bonds, and learn about a new statistic for measuring the riskiness of bond funds that is making its debut in this month's Quarterly Review insert.