U.S. News: Why Mutual Funds Lost Their Mojo

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Staying power usually means a lot on Wall Street. But apparently when it comes to mutual funds, hardly any portfolio managers have such mojo. 

Mutual funds with managers who pick securities rather than follow an index – so-called actively managed funds – seem to have little or no ability to stay ahead of the competition, even for periods as short as five years.

"Over a longer-term investment horizon, it is very, very hard for a manager to maintain a top quartile performance," says Aye Soe, senior director of global research and design at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Read more here.

OZY: When Trade School Meets Wall Street

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Imagine a scene of industrial lathes spinning, sparks flying from a welding torch and flames shooting up from workbenches. It’s a classic industrial workshop, just like the one where I studied for five years during high school in northern England. In a sense, it was like a trade school. We were learning the skills for the workplace, but the relevant jobs had mostly disappeared before we even finished. Now, it’s relevant again, because of increasing calls to encourage more studying at trade school rather than college. Read more here.

TheStreet: Why a Higher Minimum Wage Will Make Workers Poorer

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Sometimes you get two pieces of news so at odds with each other that it defies logic.

The last few days of the old year combined with the first few days of 2016 brought such a mind-muddling mess. On the one hand, 14 states started to implement higher minimum wage requirements on Jan. 1, with the goal of reducing income inequality. Read more here.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Forbes: GE Heads North And Why You May Get A Deal On A Conn. House

By SIMON CONSTABLE
It’s official: General Electric GE +0.00% is retreating from Connecticut and relocating its headquarters to Boston.

CEO Jeff Immelt says it’s a move to get it closer to an “ecosystem that shares our aspirations.” That and be near all those amazing universities in Cambridge, etc. It makes sense given that the Boston beltway is something of a Silicon Valley of the East.

I guess Yale University being in Connecticut just didn’t sway the powers that be. Still, the move could be good for house hunters looking for a deal in the nutmeg state. Read more here.

TheStreet: 7 Reasons You Should Love -- Or At Least Like -- the Market's Slide

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Ouch. Financial markets' performance this year has been nothing short of painful for many investors.

Chances are, you're still feeling the sting of 6% drops by both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor's 500 last week. It was, in fact, the worst start to a New Year ever for the S&P. There are nonetheless some good reasons to embrace the volatility, though:

Read more here.

U.S. News: Why China's Market Woes Will Hurt Some Emerging Markets

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Ouch! China has unleashed a financial typhoon on world markets. 

It's true that U.S. stocks got broadly hammered. But the real issue won't be how China's slowing economy affects the U.S. – because it likely won't.

Rather, the big impact will be felt by emerging market economies that have historically relied heavily on commodity exports, as well as some non-emerging markets that bet big on the materials business. 

Read more here.

OZY: How China's Money Mess Helps the U.S.

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Assuming he wasn’t much of a markets investor, baseball great Yogi Berra might have taken some odd pleasure in watching the financial markets unfold lately if only to repeat his famous goofy line: It was “déjà vu all over again.” We are talking, of course, about the recent meltdown in China, followed by a pretty nasty start to the year on Wall Street, where investors couldn’t have been pleased by an apparent repeat of August’s China-led stock pullback.

But investors are always looking for silver linings, and some may yet find theirs. At least some folks are promising, hoping and praying as much — that roiling markets in China might make for hay in the United States and elsewhere. What’s more, they could be right. Read more here.

Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash