If you restrict your investing, or the majority of your investing to funds with below-average expense ratios, such as those from say, Vanguard or Fidelity, your chances of finding managers who can outperform their benchmarks improves greatly.

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Looking at ratios of house prices to both rents and average wages, our survey finds that houses are significantly overvalued in 13 countries.

ECONOMIST: Your home may be worth less than you think

If markets were truly efficient, price-earnings ratios should be lower than average at the top of the cycle, since investors should anticipate a reversion to the mean.

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With the fundraising has come higher debt-to-equity ratios, which will likely soar to an average of almost 50% for the three companies this year, Bernstein Research senior analyst Neil Beveridge said, from around 20% in 2007.

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Although we know the 10 year treasury yield is artificially low right now, we still feel like REITs are not overvalued given the higher quality of REIT portfolios today (which would warrant lower relative cap rates), and given the lower dividend payout ratios (currently 74 percent of AFFO versus historical average of 82 percent).

FORBES: Move up http://i.forbesimg.com t Move down

However, Buffett added, "We'd want to buy them cheaper than the same kind of companies in the U.S." He finds the price-to-earnings ratios of Japanese companies still too high even though the Nikkei average has dropped to 8, 000 from 40, 000.

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As the graph shows, when cotton prices shot up in 2010, costs rose to an average 54.45 percent of sales from 53.5 percent the year before, according to the financial ratios analysis.

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Since a broker, if one is involved, receives a fee from the mutual fund instead of charging a load, this could be causing average fees to rise (loads are not included in most expense ratios).

ECONOMIST: Mutual funds