Recap of Investment Articles for Week of 7 Dec 2009

A round up of good articles around the internet on investing.

1. Top Mutual Funds: Luck or Skills? New Study Questions ‘Active’ Managers, looks at how the professors of finance are stuck in a quandary. They can’t be sure whether top performing funds are either just plain old lucky or is there some little morsel of skill involved.

2. Questions for a Financial Planner gives you a list of questions and checklist to ask your financial planner to see whether you are comfortable working with him or her.

3. ETF Deathwatch, December 2009: 128 Funds and Counting shows that quite a few ETFs in USA aren’t really doing that well, generating just $100,000 in average daily value.

4. Book Review: How to Smell a Rat by Ken Fisher is probably essential reading for turbulent and dangerous time like this. Remember Bernie Madoff. Enough said.

5. How Do the Best Performing Stocks of the Decade Compare to Predictions in 2000? This is something that will put a smile or grimace on your face depending on your affiliation to Fortune magazine.

This table on the left is what is shown in the article and a damning indictment of the predictive capability of the magazine’s financial writers.

Notice number 11 on the list? Guess the author who made the predictions needs to get a copy of Ken Fisher’s “How to Smell a Rat”.

Another interesting article is written by a local Singaporean blogger La Papillion on “The Blind Men and the Elephant”. It talks about his investment ethos and how he moved from hearsay to technical analysis to fundamental to a mixture of both.

It is certainly indicative of the journeys of many people who want to learn about investment and who will try different ways to do better in this art and science.

Have a good investment week!