Posts Tagged "proportion"

Picking investments based on past performance

Posted by Preet on Jul 29, 2007 | 0 comments

Invariably people will see a ranking of highest performance funds for the last year or so and ask “Are these good funds?” Others will just go and blindly buy them. In fact, there is a huge proportion of investors out there who base most of their decision on the past performance of an investment alone.  They do not research any further than the performance report for the last year.  This is no different than gambling in my eyes! To paraphrase a quote I once heard, if all that was involved in achieving the highest rate of return was looking at past performance – librarians would be the richest people on earth! Last time I checked, they were not (at...

Read More

How do banks make money on Savings Accounts?

Posted by Preet on Jul 25, 2007 | 0 comments

You’ve all seen the adds for the “no fee” savings accounts being offered at various institutions. Have you ever wondered how the banks make money on those accounts? To really simplify it, it is basically as follows: When you deposit your money into a savings account, you agree to be paid interest from the bank, which for the purpose of this post we will say is 4%. Now the bank will take that money and turn around and give it to someone in the form of a mortgage so they can buy a house and charge them 6%. So the bank COLLECTS 6% from mortgage holders and PAYS 4% to savings account holders. The difference between the 6% and the 4% is known as...

Read More