Linklist 090910: REIT's, Cash for Clunker Appliances, and Index Investing

Tonight I have a little luxury of time, so I thought I’d peruse the web and write about what’s out there.

My first stop is the Carnival of Money Hackers, hosted this week at the ABC’s of Investing, which included my article on the Three-Minute Portfolio.

1.  The host has a post that will interest you the most, as he takes you through the ABC’s of REIT’s.  I’ve been interested in real estate investment trusts; because, as the posts points out, they are said to have a low correlation to the stock market.  I thought I’d take a quick look at this bit of “common wisdom,” by graphing the return of an REIT ETF that he suggests, VNQ (blue), against the S&P 500 index (yellow).  Here is the graph from Morningstar:

They look rather strongly correlated to me.  Now perhaps this is an unfair comparison; because, the overall markets were so strongly affected by housing and mortgage-related issues over the last several years.  But it’s not clear to me that they are truly uncorrelated — I think this will take some more studying to convince me.

2.  OneMint compiled a useful collection of China-focused ETF’s.  I’m not sure I want to hold such a region-specific fund, but it seems like a good list and, overall, a good blog.

3.  FourPillars wrote about the possible “Cash for Clunker Appliances” program in which you can turn in old appliances for new Energy Star rated ones.  I’ ll nitpick that he didn’t include a link to a government website with a definitive description.  Here it is.  The DOE site also has a list of all of the Department’s recent initiatives to both develop new sources of energy and to use what we have more efficiently.  It’s really quite an impressive list.

4.  Matt at Debt Free Adventure wrote about his foray into worm composting.  I especially like that he made his own composter inexpensively rather than shelling out cash for an off-the-rack version.  I’m a huge fan of composting.  I long ago gave up my gym membership in favor of a little sweat equity in my garden.  Plus, it’s more fun hanging out in my backyard than a sweaty gym.

I also recommend reading:

5.  Jim Blankenship’s post on Index Investing over at his most excellent blog, Getting Your Financial Ducks In A Row.  He tells a compelling “story” about how success statistics for mutual funds can be manipulated.

Tags: Cash for Clunker Appliances, composting, linklist, REIT, VNQ