About: Ned Moore

To Hedge or not to Hedge A thoughtful reader asked: “Why would anyone hedge an investment? If they’re not happy with the risk, shouldn’t they just bail?” We all hedge our bets in life. In the broadest of terms... Read More...

All Costs Matter Every investment dollar spent on fees is one that will never produce a return. While many providers in the financial services world add value well beyond their costs, investors must be ever vigilant about the drag fees... Read More

A Classical Reference  As an English major at Sewanee I was moved by the last line from “Ulysses” by Alfred Lord Tennyson: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”  Little did I know then he could have been talking about bonds! Bond yields are at all-time lows. Of the ~$35 trillion of…

Automatic Investing  Technology occupies an ever expanding role in our daily activities as evidenced in how we shop, share rides and even record the moments of our lives.  Businesses are changing how they fundamentally operate to cope with profound changes in consumer preferences and behaviors. Though Wall Street has long used technology to improve its back-office…

The Future of Oil Full oil tankers float idle around the world as the market continues to work through a global glut of staggering proportions.  At the market’s low point earlier this year, as much as 100 million barrels of oil were being “stored” at sea because every available dry land tank was filled to…

Battle of the Birds Stocks seem immobilized. At the end of 2014 the S&P 500 Index was just under 2,100.  On the last trading day of April 2016, the index stood at, well, just under 2,100, or basically unchanged for nearly a year and a half.  To be sure, the index saw gains the prior…

Wall Street as Prey In the early 2000’s I was living in Houston while the country was in the midst of the tech bubble.  One of the great success stories at the time was Enron, a formerly staid Houston-based utility company reborn in such a dramatic fashion as to earn the title of “America’s Most…

For the first time in modern history, “outsider” candidates have a real chance of becoming the presidential nominee for both major parties.  While the odds of either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders actually winning the White House still look steep (the predictive market BetFair currently shows Trump with a 24% chance and Sanders at 6%),…