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Monthly Archives: November 2008

Hard Times may be Good News

November 22, 2008
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I don’t mind telling you that these are scary and depressing times for investors.  One wave of bad news no sooner breaks over us than another one–even bigger–appears. The American banking and auto industries are circling the drain, and the Dow, which was within spitting distance of 14,000 just a year ago is now, having cracked the 8,000 level, trying to decide whether to rest there for a while or just plunge further.  If you had bought a Dow index fund in July 1997, you might be exactly even now. Billions of dollars in stock value have been lost...

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Investment Advice to Use Now

November 21, 2008
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To say that we live in historic times would be an understatement.  We’ve all been shaken by more earth-shaking news in just the past few months than we’ve seen in the prior decade. There’s been the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the disappearance of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual and Wachovia, the TARP rescue plan (which itself has changed shape many times since being passed) and now the potential bailout of the Detroit automakers.  Oh, and did we mention hedge fund redemptions and failures, and now commercial real estate problems?!? And the market, of course, has...

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Investing Carnival

November 21, 2008
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This week’s Investing Carnival is up at the Dividend Growth Investor. One of our articles is featured there along with many other great posts about investing. Enjoy!

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Are Green Mutual Funds and/or ETFs Worth Buying?

November 19, 2008
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As Editor of the Cabot Green Investor, I know people encounter many of the same issues I’ve been writing about lately in Green investing. For instance, there are a lot of mutual funds that say they are Green and socially responsible, but when you drill down into their holdings, there is little to differentiate them from plain vanilla large-cap funds. Many ostensibly Green funds have Microsoft, JP Morgan Chase and Pepsico as their top holdings. Talk to managers of these funds and there is always a roundabout argument to be made for companies like these being Green, not that...

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Home Depot Turning Green

November 18, 2008
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Even after being told by an energy auditor that our house was already too Green to trim the heating bill down, I thought, there has to be some more savings to eek out. So I went to Home Depot (HD) and bought some window weatherizing film to cover our cellar windows and some extra insulation to wrap around the few exposed spots of our pipes. I wasn’t the only one poking around for a heating bill edge. I presumed the October market scare would have kept people home, but there were plenty of cars in the parking lot and...

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