ARTICLE SYNOPSIS ...Designer Funds by Gary H. Elsner, Ph.D. Mutual funds show a less than stellar performance relative to the Standard & Poor's 500 index. It should come as no surprise, then, that Wall Street has responded by offering products that mimic the S&P 500. Going a step further, some funds are set to do the exact opposite of the S&P 500 and thereby offer a hedge. Here are some guidelines. The right financial instruments are the keys to great investing. Over the last four years, 90% of mutual fund managers have been outperformed by S&P 500 index funds, so it is no surprise that new funds created to ou...
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS ...The Ulcer Index by Gary H. Elsner, Ph.D. A good risk index can be useful in the selection of stocks, funds, and trading systems. Here, then, is the ulcer index, why it is superior to the standard deviation statistic, and how it can be used in a variety of personal investing or professional money management applications. What is risk, and how is it measured? Risk is commonly defined in terms of the volatility of an investment's total return or the volatility of the price. The standard deviation is a good measure of volatility, since it measures the amount of variation around the average and i...