THE AAII JOURNAL SEPTEMBER 2018 ISSUE

COVER ARTICLE

Identifying and Screening for Vice and Virtue Stocks

Using so-called sin and ESG stocks as examples, we show how to use thematic approaches to identify potentially attractive stocks.

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Features

in Financial Planning,Advisers

Advice on Evaluating an Adviser From an Industry Veteran

By William Francavilla

Identifying a good adviser requires conducting a background check and then asking them five important questions.

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in Exchange-Traded Funds

Do the Top ETFs Continue to Outperform?

By Charles Rotblut

The returns of the 10 highest-returning ETFs from the past were looked at to see whether they continued to beat the market and their category peers.

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in AAII Model Portfolios,Small Cap Value Investing,Value Investing

Examining the Shadow Stock Value and Size Factors

By John Bajkowski

Our model portfolio is one of the oldest real-money examples of how the value and size premiums can be combined into a single strategy.

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in AAII InvestoGraphic,Exchange-Traded Funds

How ETF Shares Are Created, Redeemed and Traded

By AAII Staff

Unlike with mutual funds, which interact directly with investors, dollars flow from and to ETFs through intermediaries instead of investors.

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in Behavioral Finance

Using the Power of the Written Word to Improve Your Returns

By Charles Rotblut

Simple tools such as journals, checklists and rules can both make you more disciplined and help you to spot and avoid mistakes.

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Notes & Opinions

in Editor's Note

Editor's Note

By Charles Rotblut

Just before we went to press, two things were happening in the stock market. First, the S&P 500 index was on the verge of setting a new record high. Secondly, the current bull market was close to becoming the longest ever.

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in Dispatches,Advisers

“Meaningful Benchmark” Required to Prove Breach of 401(k) Fiduciary Duties

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that participants in a 401(k) cannot simply point to the existence of lower-price funds as proof that their employer and plan sponsor breached their fiduciary duties.

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in Dispatches

Recent Performance Influences Fund Choices

A mutual fund’s recent returns and its relative performance significantly influence whether investors choose to buy or hold onto the fund. The magnitude of these returns and whether the fund is already owned also plays a role.

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in Dispatches

Seven Steps to Protect Against Cognitive Aging

One of the first signs of cognitive aging is problems managing one’s own finances. To help adults protect themselves, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia published seven actions to take.

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in Dispatches

The Role of Leverage and Quality in Dividend Changes

Companies with low-to-moderate levels of leverage can signal positive information by raising their dividend. When leverage becomes too high, a higher-quality firm can convey positive information by doing the opposite: cutting its dividend.

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in Letters to the Editor

Letters

By AAII Staff

Members comment on the categories used in AAII's Guide to ETFs, performance and how to get started in the Model Shadow Stock Portfolio, and reasons to convert to a Roth IRA early.

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Expand to Read More

The AAII Journal, a leading investment publication, provides readers with a continuing stream of insights and ideas that focus on how you can improve your investment results. Unlike many investment magazines, ours is completely unbiased, educational and contains no advertising.

AAII has published this prestigious financial journal every month for more than 40 years. Members receive it for free and have access to thousands of evergreen articles online so they can reference information and strategies for previous market situations with a few clicks of the mouse.

Our stock journal helps individual investors manage their portfolios, build sound investment strategies and navigate all types of financial conditions. Articles range from optimizing target-date fund portfolios to retirement account withdrawal strategies and analysis on robo-advisor performance.

The magazine also has recurring features our members find invaluable. Every quarter, we dissect our model stock portfolio and provide updates to its holdings and performance. This analysis helps individual investors manage small-cap value investments.

We also offer an annual tax guide in our financial magazine. This detailed investment magazine issue covers many details that individual investors need to consider when filing their taxes. It keeps readers updated on any recent changes to tax laws and provisions and provides a handy guide to tax implications of personal investments to cut through any tax filing confusion.

Another annual feature covers ETFs (exchange-traded funds) and mutual funds. This edition helps individual investors understand what to look for when investing in funds. Online, we accompany those articles with sortable tables so that members have an interactive component to their investment research. This helps individual investors plan their portfolios and invest with confidence.

Other regular features in the AAII Journal include financial planning, stock ideas and investor professor. Financial planning articles walk investors through the process and difficulties of crafting strategies for creating wealth regardless of age. They also cover difficult situations, such as estate planning, and helpful advice for getting kids and grandchildren interested in investing.

Stock ideas, as the name implies, give readers a peek at new screens and the stocks that pass them. This part of our investing magazine helps readers identify new opportunities in the markets, flagged by a mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Because we all, as investors, need ideas, this remains one of the most popular categories.

Investor professor helps readers invest with knowledge and confidence. It deals with contingencies, such as “What happens to your investment if a company goes bankrupt?” and gives actionable advice on what resources you should use when considering a new broker. Our readers enjoy this section because of its practicality and enduring tips.

Frequent internal contributors include president John Bajkowski; AAII Journal editor and vice president Charles Rotblut; Stock Superstars Report lead analyst Wayne A. Thorp; and Dividend Investing editor Derek Hageman. Together, these internal contributors have nearly a century of market wisdom and research, which they share with clear and concise prose to help individual investors improve their knowledge and portfolios.

The AAII Journal also includes frequent guest contributions from the financial and economic space. Articles from outside industry experts differentiate our financial magazine from others and provide additional points of view for our readers. Previous guest authors have included John C. Bogle, founder of Vanguard; Jay Clayton, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; Charles Schwab; and Nobel laureate and Yale professor Robert Shiller.

We hope you’ll enjoy our articles and, if you’re not a member, consider joining the Association so you can get our prestigious magazine sent to your door every month.