Sublime

High-yield bonds—which Graham calls “second-grade” or “lower-grade” and today are called “junk bonds”—get a brisk thumbs-down from Graham.

suggested that Kris—who was 35-years-old at the time—should keep things simple: buy the broadest stock index he could for his US exposure, the broadest international index he could for his “world” exposure, and a total bond market index fund that approximated his age. I call it the Global Couch Potato Portfolio. Here’s the allocation I recommended:

The very first thing you must come to realize is that you must become a "student of markets." Not products. Not techniques. Not copywriting. Not how to buy space or whatever. Now, of course, all of these things are important and you must learn about them, but, the first and the most important thing you must learn is what people want to bu

From the early 1980s through the 2000s, interest rates were high and steadily heading down, which meant bond prices were steadily going up while also paying their holders a hefty income along the way. And quite usefully, their price action tended to be inversely correlated with equities; bond prices normally went up in recessions while stocks went

rely on your own strength instead of somebody else's compassion!

The secret is to buy bonds the big money isn’t allowed to. To illustrate the point further, let’s look at the BlackRock Floating Rate Income Strategies Fund (FRA), which buys floating-rate debt. (More about floating-rate debt in a moment). For now, just know that most of the bonds it buys are issued by corporations, and most of them are below the “