morningstar

Many retirement accounts are in tatters, but it turns out that a select few investing pros have produced exceptional gains -- in some cases more than 200 percent in cumulative returns -- over a most difficult decade.

When a friend recently told me she wanted to invest more money in bonds, I was surprised. Not just because we rarely discuss specific investments. (I'm uncomfortable giving friends financial advice for obvious reasons). But mostly because she's considering loading up on bonds right now. Wow, bad...

It seems simple enough. You know what year you plan to retire, so you pick a mutual fund with that same date, set it and forget it. No wonder target-date funds in 2008 had their highest year for net new cash flows -- at an estimated $57 billion. This year, cash flows are on track to set another...

Apparently undeterred by the second-most significant crash in the history of the U.S. stock market, the majority of institutional investors and financial advisors plan to increase their use of alternative investments despite their poor performance during last year's financial meltdown. A recent...

Fannie Mae's (FNH) report of a third-quarter loss of $19.76 billion and subsequent plea to the federal government for $15 billion in additional aid is sure to intensify a big question that so far has gone unanswered: What can be done to stem the bleeding at the giant mortgage lender and its sibling...

Score one more for index funds. In the continued debate about which offer higher rates of return, actively managed mutual funds or passive index funds, a new study from Morningstar (MORN) gives the prize to index funds. Over the past three years, while about half of actively managed funds...

It's looking more and more like Bloomberg LP is going to prevail in the bidding for BusinessWeek. That's partly because no one else seems to want the business weekly very much: Logical potential owners like Dow Jones (NWS) and Time Inc. (TWX) took themselves out of the running early on, and New...

You'll find lots of personal finance information online, but what can you truly trust? I have my favorites that I check out regularly. You can trust them and you will get good, solid financial education and advice. If you're comfortable managing your finances online, rather than deal with the...