Portfolio

Billionaire and investing icon Warren Buffett said Monday that health-care giant Johnson & Johnson has "obviously messed up in a lot of ways in the last few years. " Buffett is chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the investment company that owns or holds sizable positions in companies in numerous industries. J&J, Wells Fargo, Burlington Northern, and Coca-Cola are among the prominent companies in its portfolio. Buffett said Berkshire has not sold its stake but "we might.

If you have just had an argument with your spouse, that is a bad time to rebalance your retirement portfolio. Your emotions influence the way you trade, says a new book by a professional Wall Street trader and trading coach. Market Mind Games: A Radical Psychology of Investing, Trading and Risk (McGraw-Hill), due out this January, says that when it comes to making judgment calls on your portfolio, don't suppress your emotions. Instead, harness them and understand how they are influencing your decisions.

The markets have just been plain wacky of late. It took me a long time to learn about market volatility and why it is important for investors. But understanding volatility helps to have a broader sense of why markets move the way they do and how to split up portfolios between stocks, bonds, and other assets. I'll share some things I've read recently about why the stock market has been gyrating like a carnival ride. First, the definition of volatility: It refers to the range of movements in either direction, up or down.

George C. McFarland Jr., was named president of Pennsylvania Trust, Radnor. McFarland will retain his current responsibilities as director of trust and account administration and as portfolio manager, and will continue to help lead the internal management and administration of the firm.   Salveson Stetson Group, a Philadelphia executive search firm working with clients on identifying talent for senior executive-level positions, hired Donna DeHart as vice president. DeHart had served as a vice president for Advantage Building & Facility Services.

Many financial advisors have the same advice for nervous investors unhinged by the stock market's wild mood swings in recent days: Take a deep breath. Come in off the ledge. Don't panic. "The worst thing somebody can do is to sell into a panic," said Alexander F. Cabot, an analyst for the Wiley Group, a Conshohocken wealth advisory firm. Thursday's 500-point Dow plunge, followed by Friday's whipsaw ride between positive and negative territory, might induce the risk-averse to head for the exits.

Many financial advisers have the same advice for nervous investors unhinged by the stock market's wild mood swings in recent days: Take a deep breath. Come in off the ledge. Don't panic. "The worst thing somebody can do is to sell into a panic," said Alexander F. Cabot, an analyst for the Wiley Group, a Conshohocken wealth-advisory firm. Thursday's 500-point Dow plunge, followed by Friday's whipsaw ride between positive and negative territory, might induce the risk-averse to head for the exits.

Q. We have been discussing putting our investments in the hands of a highly recommended adviser. As part of our discussion, he said that he must have full control of our assets so that he can take advantage of opportunities that are available only for a few minutes. He wants not only control, but possession. I told him that you are opposed to giving any adviser both control and possession of the securities. He immediately pointed out that mutual funds do just that, and that you're out of date.

There is no income in fixed income. We're at a strange inflection point in the capital markets. For decades, yields on fixed-income securities such as U.S. Treasuries have been falling, and they have reached a historic low point because the federal government has been intervening in its own debt markets. Leaving aside whether it's a good idea for the Federal Reserve to buy Treasuries, the yield on the 10-year Treasury, for instance, is now less than 3 percent. As a result, there are very few places for investors like us to find a place to generate income in our portfolios.

Public stock and bond markets got you down? Venture capital is starting to look good again. VC and angel funding have rebounded strongly since 2008 and the financial crisis, and Golden Seeds Fund 2 L.P. , a vintage 2011 fund, is just one example. The fund is focused on making early-stage portfolio investments, such as Cognition Therapeutics Inc., a Pittsburgh life-sciences company, and is building a portfolio of 20-plus investments through 2013. Golden Seeds is a network of angel investors wagering on start-ups at a time when small business needs financing more than ever.

With the current volatility in both stock and bond markets, most money managers aren't as worried about taking risks in a portfolio as they are about preserving your capital and protecting income from dividend-oriented or growth stocks and bonds. Still, they are all having a hard time reading what has been an unusual investing climate. Such is the case with local money manager Bob Costello, who manages $55 million at his own shop, Costello Asset Management in Huntingdon Valley.