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The spread of 401(k) plans in the 1980s was a welcome development. Mostly. The plans offered an easy way to save for retirement. And when employers matched a part of [...]

There's no denying that real estate is a scary place to invest right now. Despite big declines in building and property prices, no one is ready to make the case [...]

We've all heard the data cited repeatedly by pop financial writers: Three-quarters of fund managers fail to beat the Standard & Poor's 500 index over time. Sometimes the proportion cited [...]

While we were preparing mutual-fund Ratings for CONSUMER REPORTS magazine (February 2007), this fact jumped out at us: Funds that changed managers within the last decade had much lower 10-year [...]

A rule of thumb in bond investing: The longer the bond's maturity, the higher its yield. The typical Treasury yield curve--a line graph plotting the yields on all maturities of [...]

The Standard & Poor's 500 index earned a respectable 30 percent over the last three years, but if you really wanted the big bucks, you had to invest overseas. The [...]

Socially responsible mutual funds have been around for more than 20 years, trying to keep their shareholders free from association with 'vice' industries or objectionable corporate behavior. In the long [...]

If you're like most people, your financial adviser has been telling you for years that large-cap stocks--the blue chips of the investing world--should anchor your investment portfolio. That, after all, [...]

Consider the two faces of the Wall Street analyst. One bears that optimistic grin--some critics would say too optimistic--about the future performance of the stocks he or she covers. When [...]

Those aches and pains should be telling you something more than the fact that you're getting on in years. They should also be telling you that health-care stocks may be [...]

It's a sad commentary that these days people know more about the odds of flopping an ace in Texas Hold 'Em than they do about the far more critical issue [...]

The nation's average yield for bank money-market accounts (MMAs) was a woeful 0.78 percent as of early May, according to Bankrate.com, which compiles financial rate information. Returns on passbook savings [...]