More than six years into a bull market, U.S. stocks look expensive. But it looks like Poland is on sale.

Stocks in Austria, France, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore and Spain also appear relatively inexpensive, based on the cyclically adjusted price/earnings ratio, or CAPE, as calculated by Joachim Klement, chief investment officer at Wellershoff & Partners, an investment consultancy based in Zurich.

This figure is also known as the Shiller price/earnings ratio, or Shiller P/E, as it was popularized by Robert Shiller, a Yale University economist and Nobel Prize winner. Read More »

Individual investors have a lot more money invested in traditional mutual funds than in exchange-traded funds. But as people continue pumping dollars into ETFs, their ETF holdings grew by more in dollar terms than their mutual-fund investments over the year through March—apparently for the first time—according to an analysis by Broadridge Financial Solutions.

That conclusion is based on the company’s tally of fund and ETF holdings in accounts at “retail” companies, including full-service and discount brokerages, which cater to individual investors and their advisers. Broadridge, based in Lake Success, N.Y., sells communications and technology services to financial-services companies.

Individual-investor holdings of ETFs grew by $267 billion in the year through March, a 24.4% increase, according to Broadridge. Over the same period, individuals’ holdings of long-term mutual funds grew by $255 billion, or 5.6%, the company said. Read More »

Today’s “Intelligent Investor” column marks the 40^th anniversary of May Day, when the Securities and Exchange Commission abolished fixed-rate commissions on stock trading—perhaps the most transformative event on Wall Street since 1792.

After all, for 183 years commissions had been non-negotiable—and for more than 40 years, ever since its creation in 1933, the SEC had been functioning like a public-utility commission, approving the rates that customers had to pay.

Finally, in the late 1960s, regulators began suggesting that fixed rates should be abolished—and met with vehement opposition from Wall Street. Read More »

It is perhaps the most pressing question facing U.S. stock investors: Are we in a short-term bubble—or headed for long-term trouble?

There are plenty of reasons to be nervous about the U.S. market’s short-term outlook. Profit margins are at historically high levels. Share prices have tripled since the March 2009 market low. Valuations appear expensive based on market yardsticks like dividend yield and price/earnings ratios.

Still, it doesn’t look like we are in a bubble, and today’s lofty valuations probably will be considered fairly normal down the road. That might sound like good news, but there is a downside: It likely means we’ll see lackluster long-run returns. Read More »

Is it a bad sign for Americans’ already low retirement savings rates that fewer companies are starting 401(k) plans these days?

The answer: Yes, but the trend isn’t as bad as it looks.

On the surface, the data don’t paint a very reassuring picture. According to Labor Department data parsed by employee-benefits research firm Judy Diamond Associates, in 2013, companies started 23,056 new 401(k) plans. That’s down 4.4% from the 24,127 plans American companies started in 2012—and it is 30% below the 32,618 plans launched in 2007. Read More »

Another private student lender is rolling out a loan for parents who want to help with their children’s college bills.

Social Finance, better known as SoFi, announced a new loan on Wednesday geared toward parents of undergraduate and graduate students. Parents sign up for the loan to cover some or all of a student’s college expenses, without leaving the student on the hook for those loan payments. Citizens Financial Group launched a similar loan earlier this month, joining Wells Fargo, which has been offering this financing option for several years.

A parent loan is different from most private student loans, which require the student to sign up for the loan and usually also need an adult co-signer, who is often the parent. Both borrowers are then responsible for payments and are at risk of ruining their credit scores and overall credit history if loan payments aren’t made. Read More »

Parents are having a harder time saving for college, a report released Wednesday shows.

Fewer American parents are saving for college and the average sum that families who are saving have accumulated to pay college costs has fallen, according to a report by the country’s largest private student-loan lender SLM Corp., better known as Sallie Mae, and market-research company Ipsos Public Affairs.

Forty-eight percent of parents with children under age 18 are saving for college this year, down from 51% last year and a peak of 62% in 2009, the report says. On average, those families that are saving have $10,040 set aside for college, down 25% from $13,408 in 2014. Read More »

The relationship between many investors and their brokers isn’t monogamous.

Investors who work with a full-service brokerage often work with a lower-cost provider as well, according to data from research firm Hearts & Wallets.

Forty-seven percent of Merrill Lynch’s full-service brokerage customers also use a self-service firm—most commonly Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab or Vanguard Group—according to Hearts & Wallets’ database and annual survey of 5,500 households. The figures are 41% at Morgan Stanley, 36% at Wells Fargo Advisors and 30% at Edward Jones, the research firm says.

It’s just like the wealthy shopper who frequents Bloomingdale’s for the latest fashions but also hits Costco for bargains, says Laura Varas, a partner and co-founder of the Rye, N.Y.-based firm. Hearts & Wallets refers to this behavior as “stable two-timing,” in part because many investors indicate in focus groups that they expect to continue working with multiple companies. Read More »

Your chances of finding a new career in later life—one that pays you more and brings you more satisfaction—could be better than you think.

That’s the primary finding in a study published this month by the American Institute for Economic Research, a nonprofit group based in Great Barrington, Mass. The report, “New Careers for Older Workers,” shows that 82% of those who attempted a transition to a new career after age 45 were successful in doing so. Read More »

Will a record high for the Nasdaq Composite Index bring a higher profile to Fidelity Investments’ Nasdaq Composite Tracking Stock ETF?

Introduced as the Boston fund giant’s first exchange-traded fund in 2003, the ETF with the ticker symbol ONEQ tracks all 2,579 stocks in the Nasdaq Composite Index, which recently soared back to heights not seen since the dot-com bubble in early 2000.

But the $575 million fund has languished over a decade in the shadow of its much larger competitor, the $40 billion Invesco Powershares QQQ ETF, or Qubes, which tracks only the largest 100 nonfinancial company stocks in the Composite. Read More »