It’s time to start looking at the roadmap. The roadmap I am speaking of here is the financial roadmap for 2009. Unlike planning a road trip, knowing where you are going to turn before you start doesn’t apply to investing. Nobody can predict all of the twists, turns, and forks in the [...]

The December 31, 2008 Fabian ETF Report is hot off the press. Click here to download this data rich listing of every exchange traded fund and their 2008 performance. The report is sorted by domestic, international, sector, bear market, currency, and leveraged funds.  

The Hulbert Financial Digest just published its top ten performing newsletters of 2008 and in the top half of that list is Doug Fabian’s ETF Trader! Our positive net return of 13.2% ranks our newsletter 4th in the country as compared to similar investment recommendation services.  Over that same time period the S&P 500 Index [...]

For most people looking to grow their serious money over the long term, I believe ETFs are quite simply the best investment vehicles available today. I suspect many of you reading this right now are already familiar with the term exchange-traded fund (ETF), but do you really understand what ETFs are? Are you aware of the [...]

I thought that this week we should review some of the basic “rules” behind investing in exchange-traded funds (ETFs). I have been touting ETFs as excellent investment growth vehicles, but anything that is new to you can be a little tricky. Rule One: Diversification ETFs are flexible investments — you can buy options, go short, and hedge. [...]

Doug Fabian and Judd Pyle give their tips for investing in difficult economic times for December 2, 2008 on Fox Business News.

Remember that phrase from the 1992 presidential election campaign? The term was coined by Democratic Party pit bull James Carville, and it refers to the idea that then Gov. William Clinton was a better choice than President George H.W. Bush because the latter had failed to properly navigate the economy through a recession. The more that [...]

Click below to download the ETF Report and PowerPoint presentations from my latest standing room only seminars at the Washington DC Money Show this past weekend. ETF Strategies in a Difficult Market Seven Secrets to ETF Success Fabian ETF Report

Why Not Turn it Into cash? By Kevin Yurkus, President, Fairway Capital Chances are you have owned a term life insurance policy for years. You probably purchased the policy to provide for a beneficiary after your death. However, for many term life insurance policyholders, the purpose and value of the policy begins to change with each passing [...]

How you can use your policy to help generate cash in a tough market. By Kevin Yurkus, President, Fairway Capital It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world on Wall Street these days, and unless you’ve been buried under a veritable avalanche of rock for the last several months, you’re undoubtedly painfully aware of just how much damage [...]

These days, it’s tough to tune in to the financial news TV networks or read the Wall Street Journal without an impending sense of doom. Sadly, I’ve had to watch the virtual destruction of our credit, equity, housing and capital markets unfold right before my very eyes. It’s an overwhelmingly sorrow-laden experience for me, as [...]

You already know we’re in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. We’re living through a financial hurricane. I know many of you are feeling extremely anxious about your investments, your income streams and your financial future. That’s why I have posted my latest free seminar to download entitled: The Election, [...]

Amidst all of the frenzy on Wall Street and Capitol Hill, it’s easy to forget that the third quarter is now over, and in about a week or so investors will be receiving their 401(k) and other financial statements. To this is say—get ready for a huge dose of “statement shock.” You are likely going to be [...]

As much as I hate to tell you this, I think at this point Congress is going to have to approve this $700 billion dollar bailout proposal lest we face a virtual crash in our financial markets. All of this talk about the next “Great Depression,” if we don’t act right now, likely will have a [...]

You know that the market’s in trouble when even safe investments aren’t safe anymore. On Tuesday, we found out that one of the first-ever, largest money market funds put a seven-day freeze on investor redemption’s after the net asset value of its shares fell below $1. Yikes! This is called “breaking the buck” in the money fund [...]

In this election year we are going to hear a lot about tax cuts and tax hikes, but I believe there is a much bigger story being missed by the financial media. This bigger story is the likelihood that estate taxes are going to go up no matter who wins the White House. Sen. Obama [...]

The greenback is back! That’s right, the value of the U.S. dollar versus rival foreign currencies has surged over the past several weeks, and that surge has caused quite the dust up in the international equity markets. Just five weeks ago the dollar had been languishing at record lows against the euro. But last week the [...]

After having just come back from the latest MoneyShow in San Francisico, I want to share with everyone the three presentations that I conducted for hundreds of individual investors. ETF Strategies In a Difficult Market Some pundits are saying that we are in a recession; others call it a mere economic slowdown. The answer in my opinion [...]

I am a financial guy, not a political pundit. I do, however, like to keep track of what’s going on in the political sphere for the simple reason that what happens in Washington D.C. can really impact what happens on Wall Street. In my opinion, the problems facing the economy and the market are some [...]

Want to here the latest update on my Lemon List, the list of America’s worst-performing mutual funds? Well, now you can take a listen to my chat with Fabian Wealth Strategies vice president David Fabian, who presented me with the highlights (or should I say low lights) of some of the most egregious mutual fund offenders [...]

When the stock market is trending downward, it is difficult to know what to do. Amid the uncertainty is the proven benefit of owning dividend-paying stocks. Sure, the share prices of such stocks and equity ETFs can fall, but the dividend payments continue to generate income in both good and bad times. Despite the current market [...]

My latest quarterly Lemon List, a list of the worst performing mutual funds, is now available online. And believe me; you don’t have to look very hard to find some very big, widely held mutual funds that have found their way onto the Lemon List in what was a very bad quarter for equities. One of those [...]

With all of the worries about bank solvency in the news headlines, I was fortunate to come across a website that rates the safety and security of banking institutions.  I encourage all of my listeners and readers who might be fearing for the safety of their money to check out http://www.bankrate.com. The reputable Bankrate.com describes their [...]

One of the greatest satisfactions that I receive is from highlighting key investment trends and passing them along to you before the rest of the investing world discovers them. A key development that I want to share with you this week is the rapid growth of exchange-traded notes (ETNs). Any regular reader of my ETF Talk [...]

When most American investors hear the word “frontier,” they might be more likely to think about the Wild West than their investment portfolios and ETFs. That’s why you may be surprised to learn that “the frontier” is not just about unchartered territories, untamed terrains, or uninhabited land. Developing and growth-oriented foreign markets also fit the [...]

One of my favorite things to do is speak at corporate events. I love interacting with the crowd, answering questions and meeting new people. The subject of my next corporate speaking event is how to “get real” with your finances now, before you find yourself in dire straits. The title of my talk is, [...]

If you’re like me, you love reading all kinds of opinions about where things are headed. I recently read two articles that I thought really showed just how diverse the range of opinion is amongst the experts. In the bullish camp was famed Wall Street giant, former Morgan Stanley global chief investment strategist and now hedge [...]

Anybody who’s ever invested money in the financial markets has probably received an unsolicited call from a stockbroker trying to get him or her to open up an account with that broker’s firm. This common practice of making unsolicited calls to prospective clients is known in the industry as “dialing for dollars.” But now that the [...]

Active management used to be the exclusive province of the mutual fund industry, but thanks to some new exchange-traded funds (ETFs), those days of exclusivity are over. Actively managed mutual funds frequently do not outperform market averages, so it remains to be seen how actively managed ETFs will fare under a loosening of their traditional focus [...]

I came across an interesting story on one of my favorite websites, Minyanville, about how the debt crisis in this country has manifested itself in our culture.  I live in Newport Beach and continually see people spending money they don’t have to be someone who they are not.  In other words, they are sacrificing their [...]

Growl Like a Bear Doug Fabian, president of Fabian Wealth Strategies, says we’re in a bear market and he suggests some strategies to help you protect your portfolio in tough times.  Click here to view the video.

“How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!” —Charles Darwin One of the greatest scientists of all time, Charles Darwin, was a stickler for cataloging observation. But more than that, he put that observation into the service [...]

I know this won’t come as much of a surprise to some readers, but the media has once again missed the boat. This past Sunday the Los Angeles Times ran a cover story in the business section about buying a used car. What? Nowhere in the entire business section was there any article on the troubles in [...]

You’ve probably heard a lot about “risk management” lately in the financial media. Many pundits are saying that the Federal Reserve is in risk management mode, meaning that they think the central bank is very concerned that we could see a system shock that disrupts consumer confidence and throws the economy into recession. Traditionally, the Fed [...]

It’s now official. The Federal Reserve just slashed interest rates again — this time by 50 basis points. Combine today’s rate cut with last week’s surprise, 75-basis-point cut and you have the fastest decline in interest rates in years. The federal funds rate, an overnight bank lending rate that affects how much interest consumers pay on [...]

By Josh Lewis The biggest financial news story of the last year has been the bursting of the housing bubble led by the implosion of the mortgage markets. Last year, 2007, was the first year on record that saw a year-over-year decrease in nationwide home values. This year is shaping up as a continuation of that [...]