How Do We Choose the Funds We Use?
Does it seem like there’s been an extra level of uncertainty lately, threatening your investment plans? Of course, there are always big events going on; that’s the world for you. But today’s brew of geopolitical threats, inflation trends, rising interest rates, recessionary fears, and lingering COVID concerns may feel especially daunting. The market’s volatile reactions […]
Market Commentary: Q1 2022
Stock Markets Not surprisingly, stock markets were volatile this quarter. Faced with a myriad of issues ranging from renewed inflation, historically high equity valuations, winding down the Fed’s “Quantitative Easing”, capped by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The largest tech companies held up reasonably well, with Facebook as the only notable exception. Returns from stocks traded […]
How the Conflict in the Ukraine affects Investors
The war that began this week between Russia and the Ukraine is a human tragedy and a stark reminder that dollars and cents are secondary to health and safety. Some of us who have friends and family in the areas affected by war are focused on the wellbeing of their loved ones. But for most […]
Major Firms predict Expected Returns in the coming Decade
Every year large Wall Street firms publish their forecast of expected returns for the coming decade. The following table shows what each firm expects from capital markets in the coming 10-years. The first thing that jumps out is the poor expected performance by U.S. equities. Despite averaging nearly 10% over the last 100 years, forecasters […]
Things to be Thankful For: Stock Market Returns, Not Bank Interest
Over the last 90 years, the stock market has been great to investors. No one knows what the market will do tomorrow, but the longer your horizon, the more the odds are in your favor – and you don’t have to wait very long for the numbers to look pretty good. With bank interest close […]
Market Commentary: Q3 2021
Stock market returns were mixed in the third quarter. Microsoft, Google and Apple led returns in the domestic large-cap stock market; stocks traded in international developed markets and REITs were also positive. The riskier domestic small-cap and emerging market stocks posted negative results, which dragged a portfolio diversified among all these markets down over 2% […]
State of the Labor Market
Covid-19 didn’t just bring volatility to the stock market, it also brought volatility to the labor market. The number of unemployed quadrupled from 5.7 million (3.5%) in February 2020 to 23.1 million (14.8%) in April 2020. Not surprisingly, the number of job openings decreased from 7.1 million to 4.6 million at that same time. Fortunately, […]
2020 active vs. passive
Each year the financial services company, Morningstar, issues a report of how actively managed funds performed relative to passive funds. Historically, actively managed funds have not performed as well as funds designed to simply replicate a market or published index. However, one argument active fund managers make is that they are “nimbler” during times of […]
How big are the largest American companies?
Somewhere between colossal and titanic. Apple, the largest publicly traded company in the world, has a market capitalization of $2.4 trillion. If it were its own country it would be slightly less valuable than all the publicly-traded stocks in Germany and slightly more valuable than those in South Korea. Microsoft is worth $2.2 trillion, a […]
We all want income – but cash is what we really need?
Some of us still yearn for a simpler time, when we could expect to retire and live comfortably on interest and dividend income from our investments. Protecting the principal of our nest egg would allow us to live many happy years without fear of running out of money. Of course we may still want to […]