The potential collapse of Colonial BancGroup poses another hazard to the still-shaky housing market: Mortgages could become even harder to get.
Demand for U.S. Treasury bonds surged Wednesday, lowering the yield on the benchmark note to an all-time low, as investors responded to grim economic data and falling mortgage rates.
American Home Mortgage filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this week. Mortgage banking company Homebanc announced it will shutter its doors. Other mortgage lenders are also sending out distress signals. Here's what you need to know if your mortgage lender goes out of business.
American Home Mortgage filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week. And mortgage banking company Homebanc announced it will shutter its doors. Other mortgage lenders are also sending out distress signals.
A number of subprime mortgage lending companies are taking a hit to their profits or facing bankruptcy. Here's what you need to know if your mortgage lender goes out of business.
If this is a time in your investing life when you're focusing less on the growth of your portfolio and more on the stream of cash you can draw from it, you're facing a real challenge. Years of dema...
If this is a time in your investing life when you're focusing less on the growth of your portfolio and more on the stream of cash you can draw from it, you're facing a real challenge.
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Fannie Mae (FNM) officials were warned in late 1998 that a Fannie-approved lender the company suspected of fraud was trying to pass off problematic loans to Ginnie Mae, according to a letter the company recently sent to House lawmakers.
Ask the typical Wall Street savant about Japan's decade-long battle with deflation, and he'll argue that it can't occur here. Our central bankers at the Federal Reserve are too vigilant and our ba...
Even the leading lights of the investing world couldn't beat back a brutal bear market. Still, half of last year's Ultimate Investment Club bested the S&P 500, and only two suggested portfolios of ...
The potential collapse of Colonial BancGroup poses another hazard to the still-shaky housing market: Mortgages could become even harder to get.
Demand for U.S. Treasury bonds surged Wednesday, lowering the yield on the benchmark note to an all-time low, as investors responded to grim economic data and falling mortgage rates.
American Home Mortgage filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this week. Mortgage banking company Homebanc announced it will shutter its doors. Other mortgage lenders are also sending out distress signals. Here's what you need to know if your mortgage lender goes out of business.
American Home Mortgage filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week. And mortgage banking company Homebanc announced it will shutter its doors. Other mortgage lenders are also sending out distress signals.
A number of subprime mortgage lending companies are taking a hit to their profits or facing bankruptcy. Here's what you need to know if your mortgage lender goes out of business.
If this is a time in your investing life when you're focusing less on the growth of your portfolio and more on the stream of cash you can draw from it, you're facing a real challenge. Years of dema...
If this is a time in your investing life when you're focusing less on the growth of your portfolio and more on the stream of cash you can draw from it, you're facing a real challenge.
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Fannie Mae (FNM) officials were warned in late 1998 that a Fannie-approved lender the company suspected of fraud was trying to pass off problematic loans to Ginnie Mae, according to a letter the company recently sent to House lawmakers.
Ask the typical Wall Street savant about Japan's decade-long battle with deflation, and he'll argue that it can't occur here. Our central bankers at the Federal Reserve are too vigilant and our ba...
Even the leading lights of the investing world couldn't beat back a brutal bear market. Still, half of last year's Ultimate Investment Club bested the S&P 500, and only two suggested portfolios of ...
It's been a tough 12 months for Ginnie Maes and Ginnie Mae funds. Like most bonds, the government-backed mortgage securities were hit hard by the Russian economy's collapse last year as investors h...
With all the lurid tales coming out of Washington, D.C. these days, a bit of good news got scant attention earlier this year: The Clinton Administration is reportedly considering raising $2.5 billi...
To anyone who lives in or sails the Caribbean, hurricane season is an annual reminder that paradise is not a permanent state. The recent low-pressure system on Wall Street (Hurricane Boris, was it?...
Over the past three months of stock market turmoil, investors have rediscovered the benefits of bonds. Fleeing one global crisis after another, they have flocked to ultrasafe Treasuries, pushing up...
After 18 years of marriage, Connie and Kel Saito still have their differences, even when they try to relax by playing mixed doubles on a tennis court near their San Jose home. "We'll have arguments...
For a man generally regarded as the top bond fund manager of his generation, Bill Gross, 53, chooses a rather unflattering metaphor to describe fixed-income buyers. "Bond investors are the vampires...
For dazed stock investors, it's been an unusually rollicking ride on the stock market roller coaster lately. After rising 9.3% in the first five months of the year, Standard & Poor's 500-stock inde...
If you're feeling roughed up by bonds lately, it's no surprise. Not only have interest rates been inching higher, but the Friday after Independence Day saw bond prices take their fourth-biggest per...
One expert tells you to buy shares with low price-to-earnings ratios. Another swears by companies with high earnings growth. Still others tout high yields, or price momentum, or low price-to-book r...
THE MUTUAL FUND INDUSTRY SURE MUST BE EATING its Wheaties. Assets in stock and bond funds grew from a comparatively scrawny $137 billion spread among 820 funds a decade ago to a strapping $1.55 tri...
With borrowing costs rising and securities markets roiling, it is easy to forget that there's a bright side to rising interest rates -- namely, higher yields on savings and income investments. Toda...
The quest for income in today's low-yield economy is beginning to resemble the search for intelligent life in the universe: Believers know it's out there but aren't sure where. Meanwhile, back on e...
If popularity were the same as profitability, bond funds would surely be the best investment since the Yankees bought Babe Ruth from the Red Sox for $100,000 in 1920. The funds already hold more th...
Here's an investing fable: Imagine that you're about to mail a check to your money-market fund, when a genie suddenly appears. In a voice that sounds remarkably like Robin Williams' (hey, it's just...
IN A YEAR when short-term interest rates fell like a safe dropped from a tenth-story window, who can blame the fixed-income investor for feeling crushed? After all, the poor guy who complained a ye...
Q Recently our church was willed $200,000. As a trustee, I want to invest it to protect the principal but also to earn more than the 3% to 5% offered by money-market funds and bank accounts. Please...
In 1970, when Congress last overhauled the law that create the modern mutual fund industry 52 years ago, there were no Ginnie Mae or even money-market funds, let alone 12b-1 fees, back-end loads or...
What's with this market? Defying a stock implosion in Tokyo and creeping interest rates at home, it seems to reach effortlessly skyward. But a closer look reveals some straining. While the Dow has ...
Fed up with puny yields on bank accounts and money-market funds, savers have lately been shoveling dough into Ginnie Mae funds at a rate of $100 million a day. And why not? Call a Ginnie fund spons...
Investors now have the right to bear ARMs. Not those that fire, those that yield. Adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) have recently become an investment vehicle widely available to small investors thr...
Although their name, collateralized mortgage obligations, tends to make your eyes glaze over, the securities' high yields make them the hottest new income investment since the money fund. After all...
WHERE, oh, where, have the bond yields gone? Three-month Treasury bills pay only 5.09%, and even 30-year T-bonds now deliver less than 8%. Heck, two-year notes were recently priced to yield about 6...
Bond funds are pulling in the money -- $68 billion of new cash this year -- as investors try to beat the interest rates on money funds, which are at a five- year low of 5.21%. If your dollars are p...
AT LAST you have time to improve your handicap and tarry at favorite vacation spots. But retirement is no mere lark. Like a pioneer setting off in a Conestoga wagon with limited provisions, you mus...
SOPHIE TUCKER, that grand old vaudevillian, once observed: ''I've been rich, and I've been poor. Believe me, rich is better.'' For investors today, not only is rich better -- it's almost a necessit...
Who says that bond investors don't care about growth? During ten years as head of fixed-income funds at the Vanguard Group in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Ian MacKinnon helped the company's bond fun...
Guts led to glory in the first half of 1991 -- and not just in the Persian Gulf. Taking risks paid off big for armies of mutual fund investors as well. For starters, the average equity fund handily...
Remember the good ol' days of 1989? Of course you do. Who could forget that a little over two years ago the average money-market mutual fund yielded a robust 9.2%? Savers then could hardly go wrong...
With money-market fund yields down from 7.6% on Jan. 1 to 5.9% in early May, small investors pulled $6.5 billion out of their accounts last month and reinvested most of it in bond funds and the res...
-- Act quickly if you want to take advantage of today's low-interest-rate mortgages and home-equity loans. Adjustable-rate mortgages, for example, are available at initial rates of 7% or less from ...
Investing has always been fertile ground for dubious generalizations. Let a stock-market bore corner you at a party, and you will inevitably get an earful of maxims and truisms. Some of these are o...
Worried by the slumping stock market, the sluggish economy, and rising bank failures? Hankering for the super safety of U.S. Treasury bonds? Don't buy just yet. There is a better haven for your cas...
BONDS HAVE FARED better than stocks this year, but that isn't saying much. Total return has generally amounted to only a few percentage points, while prices have behaved like a yo-yo. Early in the ...
The Federal National Mortgage Association got a lot of attention last month when it announced that it would buy rollover mortgages -- fixed-rate loans that run for seven years with an option to ren...
( Investors seeking decent returns with moderate risk might look at Ginnie Maes -- mortgage-backed securities issued by the Government National Mortgage Association. Last summer, the Ginnie Mae mar...
Bond experts are always at odds over the future direction of interest rates, but lately their bickering has reached a heated pitch. Economic growth is slowing, so some insist that interest rates wi...
With the economy showing more signs of weakness, such as October's 0.4% drop in the index of leading indicators and November's tenth-of-a-point rise in unemployment, small investors have been shift...
When you apply for a home loan nowadays, more and more banks and S&Ls let you decide whether you will pay their current mortgage rate or a future one. The future rate might be the one prevailing wh...
If you belong to a credit union, you may soon find it harder to get a mortgage there. The National Credit Union Administration, a federal regulator, is expected to issue cautionary guidelines that ...
So far it's been a banner year for bonds. Over the nine months ended in September, long-term Treasuries racked up a 14.6% total return, counting price appreciation and interest. Don't expect those ...
TIRED OF worrying about America's budget deficit? Now you can start worrying about the vast sums that are not on the budget. Uncle Sam's off-budget guarantees will climb from $2.1 trillion in 1980 ...
Bond fund investing keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. Remember 1989's first quarter, when interest rates rose sharply and many fixed-income fundholders saw their yield income all but wiped out...
Recent signs that the economy is slowing have sparked rallies in both stocks and bonds as investors anticipate that the Federal Reserve will let interest rates decline. This trend toward lower rate...
Who would have guessed? Here we are facing renewed inflation, high interest rates, and recession worries, yet the stock market blossoms as if bad news were its favorite fertilizer. The rousing spri...
. Desperate to recoup flagging commissions, brokerage firms and sponsors of investment products are resorting to a new marketing gimmick to lure chary buyers into risky investments with high fees. ...
For mutual fund shareholders, 1988 started two months early -- on Oct. 19, 1987, the day the bulls ran into a brick wall. Since that day, the dominant mood of fund investors has been gloom, and not...
The year ahead looks ideal for conservatives -- including conservative investors. A variety of safe, income-producing securities now virtually assures a 2% to 3% annual return in 1989 after taxes a...
When Wall Streeters said things were heating up this summer, they weren't necessarily talking about the weather. With torrid action in commodity prices fueling inflation fears, interest rates have ...
Trapeze artists and retirees have this in common: proper planning can mean everything when it comes time to let go. But retirees face the more frightening prospect. They must execute their daring t...
LIKE a preternatural spring day, the March figures on the economy's performance sent many analysts off into warm reveries. But the putative strengths look good only in comparison with the gloomy ex...
GINNIE MAES -- Q. Five years ago, I bought a Prudential-Bache Ginnie Mae Series I and have been receiving returns on both principal and interest. When I recently called Pru-Bache to ask how much my...
''We need more stable income.''
In spite of the chastening recent history of Ginnie Maes, income-oriented investors are being touted onto a newer, assertedly more predictable form of mortgage-backed security that is called a coll...
A cruel spring it has been for bondholders. No sooner had they finished counting their hefty profits from 1986 -- with total returns exceeding 20% in many instances -- than a quick April sell-off s...
The Dow has been turning out records faster than RCA this year. Indeed, it has crossed five century marks and set 33 all-time highs in little over three months. Its first-quarter rise of 21.4% was ...
The beat goes on. Mutual funds are hotter than a U-2 concert in July. Highlights from 1987's historic first quarter: -- The average diversified equity fund went gold, posting a 19.2% total return. ...
Last year, as the bull market aged, the party raged and fund operators could barely conjure up new products fast enough to handle the influx of bucks. According to estimates by the Investment Compa...
One of the hottest income investments of the new year will be the REMIC (real estate mortgage investment conduit). Rated AAA and backed by the federal government, it will yield as much as 2 1/2 per...
For most small investors, mutual funds are the only practical way to tap the rich and diverse vein of corporate, government and municipal bonds. To buy individual bonds, you should plan on dividing...
Yearning for the good old days of 1981 when you could earn 15% and up on cash certificates of deposit and bank money-market funds? In a sense, those days are still with us. You can safely earn real...
THE GOOD NEWS is that your investment has doubled. Back in 1981 you plunked $10,000 into a certificate of deposit at your friendly bank and locked in 16% annual interest for five years. Now, thanks...
With so many investors lusting after the highest possible yields, the managers of many fixed-income mutual funds have shown themselves all too willing to please. They are coming up with ever more c...
Ever hear of taxable municipal bonds? Before this year they were rare as rain in the desert. Thanks to tax reform, taxable munis may soon account for as much as 20% of the municipal bond market. Th...
Many economists forecast lower interest rates within the next few months. If the economists are right, bonds, which increase in value when rates fall, may well outperform stocks over the coming yea...
If you are a yield-hungry investor, you probably crave a bumper crop these days. Risk-free yields of 13% just five years ago on Treasury bills and 16% on CDs and money-market funds may have spoiled...
These are the best of times for housing, and the industry thinks the party will continue well into next year. The Department of Commerce reported that sales of new homes jumped 27.3% in March to th...
Six months into one of the strongest stock market sprints ever, stock jockeys can't keep up with the bond boys. Since the bond market rally began in October, the prices of long-term U.S. Treasury b...
The mortgage-backed securities market, one of the hottest new businesses on Wall Street, suffered its second blow in four months. A unit of E.F. Hutton that pools mortgages and sells shares as mort...
With interest rates tumbling, investors seeking to lock in safe, double-digit yields are beginning to resemble naturalists in search of vanishing species. One such animal still in plentiful supply ...
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