The S&P 500 has served as an excellent benchmark for the state of U.S. economy for decades. Its reliability, touted by icons like Warren Buffett, has become such that S&P 500 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from Vanguard, State Street and BlackRock - among others - are among the largest in the industry. However, the "buy it and forget it" approach of investing solely in the S&P 500's appreciation may often leave potentially larger gains on the table.
A member of the House of Lords asked a senior British diplomat to help a Ghanaian goldmining venture in which he held shares, claiming it was in the UK national interest, the Guardian can disclose. The revelation will add to concerns about apparent breaches of parliamentary lobbying rules by Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British army. The peer is already under scrutiny over his lobbying for several companies, leading in two cases to investigations by the Lords' standards body.