Posts Tagged ‘Investing’

As a young investor, you have a powerful ally on your side: time. When you start saving and investing for retirement in your twenties or thirties, you can put it to work for you. The effect of compounding is huge. Most people underestimate it, so it is worth illustrating. We will use reasonable annual return…

No one knows what will happen tomorrow on Wall Street. Even the most esteemed analysts can only make educated guesses. As the old saying goes: past performance is not indicative of future results. All that said, the market has had many more positive years than negative years. The history of the S&P 500 is worth…

Investors are routinely warned about allowing their emotions to influence their financial decisions.  They are less routinely cautioned about letting their preconceptions and biases color their financial choices. In a battle between the facts & our preconceptions, our preconceptions may win. If we acknowledge this tendency, we may be able to avoid some unexamined choices…

When will the stock market stabilize? As the last trading week of August began, worried investors wondered just that. Gains for the major indices were hard to imagine at Monday’s opening bell, but few imagined the Dow Jones Industrial Average would drop 1,089 points as trading began – a new record, as the blue chips…

America once experienced something called “moderate inflation.” It may seem like a distant memory, but it could very well return in the second half of this decade. A remote possibility? Most economists think the Fed will start raising interest rates in late 2015 and take them higher in 2016 through a series of incremental hikes…

You learn lessons as you invest in pursuit of long-run goals. Some of these lessons are conveyed and reinforced when you begin saving for retirement, and others you glean along the way.     First & foremost, you learn to shut out much of the “noise.” News outlets take the temperature of global markets five days…

Will bond investors soon suffer major losses? In the last few years, Bill Gross, Jim Rogers and other pundits have warned of a bond bubble. While it has yet to occur – the broad bond market yielded an annualized 4.42% from 2010-2014 – the threat remains. Quality bonds have a place in a portfolio, but…

Do target-date funds represent smart choices, or just convenient ones? These funds have become ubiquitous in employer-sponsored retirement plans and their popularity has soared in the past decade. According to Morningstar, net inflows into target-date funds tripled during 2007-13. Asset management analysts Cerulli Associates project that 63% of all 401(k) contributions will be directed into…

Plan to put yourself steps ahead of your peers. If you have a young, growing family, no doubt your to-do list is pretty long on any given day. Beyond today, you are probably working on another kind of to-do list for the long term. Where does “saving and investing” rank on that list? For some…

When stocks retreat, should you pick up some shares? If you like to buy and hold, it may turn out to be a great move. Buying during a downturn or a correction may seem foolish to many, but if major indexes sink and investors lose their appetite for risk, you may find excellent opportunities to…