Sunny Weather Forecast Economists and traders pay a lot of attention to something that probably doesn’t keep you up at night: the FOMC Minutes, or, in English, the summary of the discussion among decision-makers on the Federal Reserve Board, known as the Federal Open Market Committee. What do they discuss? The health of the U.S. […]
Perspective on Today’s Market Events It looks like the U.S. stock market will finally get something that happens, on average, about once a year: a 10+% percent drop—the definition of a market correction. The last time this happened was a whopper—the Great Recession drop that caused U.S. stocks to drop more than 50%–so most people […]
Worker Wealth Decline You hear a lot about the so-called “trickle-down effect” that lower corporate taxes will trigger, and also a lot about the decline in wealth of the middle class of American workers over the years. A recent Harvard Business School report suggests that there HAS been an erosion in the income of American […]
False Visions of the Future The financial experts know a lot more about the markets and how the markets will perform in the future than the ordinary rest of us. Right? As it turns out, the predictions made by financial experts are no better than those made by gypsies looking into crystal balls, soothsayers gazing […]
When the Index Beats the Algorithms You might wonder why there wasn’t more media coverage of one of the most interest bets ever made in the investment world. We’re not talking about betting on a company; this bet was made between Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffet and a hedge fund called Protégé Partners, on whether […]
The Value of Diversification It’s not always easy to grasp the value of diversification—why, in other words, it’s better to own many stocks inside a mutual fund than one or two stocks on their own. But recent research conducted by Arizona State U. finance professor Hendrik Bessembinder offers some insight. Bessembinder is not afraid of […]
2017 Year-End Investment Market Report The bull market continued for another year, causing market indices to soar to new heights over and over again and—ominously—also pushing valuations further beyond the long-term averages. A breakdown shows that just about everything gained in 2017. The Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index—the broadest measure of U.S. stocks—rose 6.39% for […]
We all know that inflation gradually erodes the value of our dollars, and you’re probably aware that this is one of the main reasons for investing in the stock market. If you hide your money safely under your mattress, it becomes incrementally less valuable each year depending on the inflation rate. To keep pace, you […]
False Positive? We’ve all heard about as much as we can take about the U.S. Fed’s multi-part QE program, and similar stimulus programs instituted by the European Central Bank. What they mostly have in common is the purchase of government and certain mortgage-backed bonds on the world markets, which has the effect of holding down […]
Why Rebalance? You probably know that your investment portfolio is being rebalanced on a regular basis, but you might not know why. Is it for higher returns? For maintaining the agreed-upon balance of investments that is in your risk tolerance comfort zone? Does rebalancing help manage portfolio risk? The answer to the above is “yes,” […]
