Co-authored with Theresa Hamacher.
Risk matters as much as return in any mutual fund investment, but assessing the risk of a specific mutual fund can be a challenge. Even though mutual funds have become increasingly complex, their risk disclosure was designed for a simpler era, when funds used only traditional investment strategies.
Co-authored with Theresa Hamacher.
As April 15 approaches, high-income taxpayers may be thinking about the impact of recent legislation limiting their itemized deductions. Under one part of the legislative package from January, itemized deductions are reduced once income exceeds a certain threshold: $250,000 for single taxpayers and $300,000 for married couples.
Several of the letters of April 10 criticize my proposal (“Corporate-Tax Reform Without Tears,” op-ed, April 1) to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%, financed by allowing corporations to deduct 70% (instead of 100%) of gross interest expense. My proposal would be revenue neutral while reducing the strong tax bias in favor of debt.
New leadership is coming to the Securities and Exchange Commission with the nomination of Mary Jo White as SEC chairman.
So it seemed just the right time to ask mutual-fund and investing experts: What do you think officials in Washington could do to help mutual-fund investors the most?
In the recent tax legislation to avoid the fiscal cliff, Congress reinstated a limitation on itemized deductions for affluent taxpayers, known as Pease (after its original author, the late Rep. Donald Pease). Under Pease, itemized deductions are modestly reduced depending on how much a taxpayer’s adjusted gross income exceeds a specified threshold — $250,000 for an individual and $300,000 for a married couple.
Economists have long recognized the damaging effects of the high U.S. corporate tax—at 35%, the rate is the highest in the industrialized world. Over the past few years, politicians in both parties have come to understand that the corporate tax system itself is dysfunctional, causing resources to be misallocated and encouraging corporations to invest overseas.
To be an effective manager, you need to be skilled at giving out both praise and criticism. While praise is easy to give, it is far more challenging and unpleasant to criticize your employees. Yet the practice of management requires you to occasionally show employees where they need to improve. Thus, it is vital for managers to learn how and when to give negative feedback.
The investment management world used to be simple. Mutual fund managers sold stock and bond investments to the general public subject to stringent regulation, while unregulated hedge fund managers served only the very wealthy with much riskier investment strategies.