Have you ever enjoyed a glass of wine at dinner and wondered what the one-percenters are enjoying at their tables? Or, perhaps, the one-tenth-of-one-percenters? Sotheby’s, the auction house based in New York, London and Hong Kong, recently released its 2018 Wine Market Report, which is a summary of the auction action last year among […]
If you haven’t been really, really sick in the last few years, you may not have ever heard of the “donut hole” in Medicare Part D prescription drug plans. This is the common name in the medical field for a quirky coverage gap where, if you incurred $3,750 worth of drug costs in any […]
Many people wait too long to create advance health directives and designate a health care surrogate, and the results can be tragic. A recent article, by a physician who is also a financial planner, illustrates a not-uncommon situation that nobody wants to find themselves in. The story begins with a woman suddenly becoming acutely […]
Magnetic Poles You probably know that when you look at a compass needle, it doesn’t point exactly to the place at the very top of the world, called North Pole. The magnetized needle, instead, is attracted to the MAGNETIC North Pole, which is in a different location. In fact, the Earth’s Magnetic North Pole […]
I’ll take my chances… Chances are, you’ve already heard or read endless predictions about… everything. The direction of interest rates. Market returns and whether the markets will go down or up. When the next recession will hit. The movements of the cryptocurrency markets. If the market gurus were being honest, they wouldn’t give us definitive […]
What’s the best strategy for navigating choppy investment markets? The classic advice is to hang on for dear life. But is there a better option? Taming the Roller Coaster A recent article by Michael Batnick of Rithold Wealth Management helpfully reminds us that we have experienced two VERY choppy market periods since 1999. Buy […]
A full month into a historic government shutdown. A full month into a historic government shutdown, after 800,000 government workers have missed their second paycheck, two things are clear: 1) Economists and political pundits had no expectation that the impasse would past this long. 2) The impact on the U.S. economy cannot be calculated with […]
Doesn’t everybody use the internet? Actually, if you look at internet usage acrossthe global economy, you find that the citizens of wealthier nations like Sweden,Australia, Canada and the U.S. are far more likely to have internet access than lesswealthy nations like Tanzania, Indonesia and India. You can see from the graph that GDP per capita […]
Your First Impression You only have five seconds to make a good first impression, right? Or maybe it’s 10 seconds, or 13. A study of 2,000 Americans commissioned by Dollar Shave Club (you might consider the source), the actual time it takes to make a first impression is actually 27 seconds, and […]
Government Shutdown Consequences As the U.S. government shutdown enters its second week, you might wonder how so many shuttered government agencies and laid-off federal workers will affect the economy and your portfolio. The good news is that the economic impact, overall, is likely to be small. In late 2013, a similar government shutdown, spanning 16 […]
