2023 is over, and was very positive, but now we look ahead. As usual, there is no shortage of talking points, some of which don’t change from one year to the next. A few are continuations from last year, but every new year offers endless chances for surprises. December of each year is filled with
These three things will continue to dominate the news for a while, so I thought I would briefly cover them in a market update. Note that I am solely focused on their impacts to investments and not on your day-to-day life, as those can be very different. Inflation is certainly higher than average right now
I love documenting stock market sensationalism (meaning, shocking stories in the news meant to provoke fear), and wanted to share this one with you: Two months ago today this article was published, and the ‘expert’ said the market would crash within 60 days due to what he felt were likely dismal upcoming earnings announcements and
It’s been a wild ride for investors the last 15 months, but I sincerely believe things are improving, despite some of the new developments in the banking sector. The stock market is a leading indicator, and will change directions before good or bad things resolve themselves. Right now, the market appears to have priced in
I look at the markets every single day; that’s my job. Many of my clients don’t, which has been especially good this year. However, I know that many peeked at their September 30th statements a few weeks ago and felt gloomy due to the declines that we all saw. Because of that, I wanted to
The radio and television, filled with bad news: high inflation, war, social unrest over race, polarized politics, etc. I’m not talking about today, though: I’m talking about the year 1968. Americans were going through really bad times 54 years ago. In many cases, far worse than today. On this day in 1968, the Dow Jones
It’s that time again in the cycle of the stock market that I’m hearing more and more fearfulness from people due to the market volatility and the frenzied news coverage of it. I’ve been revisiting some other times when I’ve written commentaries about similar times, like this article from 2018, this one from 2016, and
This is a question I get asked a lot, especially whenever there is volatility like there is right now. While I don’t know what’s going to happen today, or next week, or even next year, I can tell you that investing in stocks has proven to be the best way to beat inflation and grow
In 2021, the US stock market (both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average) returned over 20% (28.7% and 20.1% respectively); these are solely made up of large capitalization US stocks. If you also had some mid-cap and small-cap stocks in your portfolio, you did a lot worse (the Russell 2000 was up
A question that I’m fielding more and more lately is “what do you think about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.?” I have a long answer for this question. I am all about diversification, so if you want to put some money into crypto, I think that’s fine. However, I don’t believe that crypto is a