Am I a good stock picker?

Four times in my life I have thought: “That would be a good stock to buy.” And all of those times, it turned out I was right. The first time was when Chipotle went public. It was Jon’s idea; we were eating there often at the time, and he mentioned that he thought it would be [...]

My investments in 2008: a reckoning

I’ve been thinking about laying out an investment strategy for 2009. But first, I thought I’d review the performance of my IRA and 401(k) last year. The bottom line: I didn’t do nearly as terribly as I thought–my returns were roughly equal to those of the S&P 500. Still, there are things I should have done [...]

Real estate as a hedge against a market collapse

Saving to Invest included me in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance, and I noticed another great post, “What if saving was stupid?” It makes a powerful argument for investing in real estate instead of keeping money in the stock market or in a savings account. The author’s in-laws, who lived in the Soviet Union, saved [...]

And once again, we ask: should we buy more GE stock?

It’s that time of the month again: when Jon looks at GE’s slumping stock price and can’t resist. (Hey, Warren Buffet couldn’t resist either.) It’s now at $17.81, down from about $32 when we first bought it earlier this year. That means the dividend yield is almost 7 percent. GE recently declined to raise the [...]

What index fund should I buy?

Usually, Jon’s the one who gets up in the morning and checks the Asian and European stock markets, for clues to what our market will do when it opens. But this morning it was me. For weeks, he’s been saying we should buy, and I’ve been pointing out that we have a $8800 tuition bill [...]