For starters, you can’t project the past into the future. A fund that makes you 18% this year might lose you 2% next year. Past performance is a lousy predictor of future performance. Burton Malkiel, shows in his great book A Random Walk Down Wall Street that the best funds in the 1970s lagged behind [...]

The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has investors everywhere wondering if to purchase, hold or bail. Though there is no telling if the current world recession will turn into a sepia toned, soup lined sequel to that historic calamity, it did get us thinking: If the whole point of stocks is to purchase [...]