At the beginning of the year, the overwhelming consensus of financial experts was there would be a recession in 2023. Surely, in such a scenario, the stock market would be down for the year. No such recession occurred, and, as 2023 nears its end, markets are near all-time highs. The fact that the experts were […]
I’ll Buy More When the Market Goes Down, Except When it Goes Down
2022 has been a challenging year for investing, with the longest bear market since 2008. The Fed seems serious about controlling inflation, and higher interest rates are seldom good for stock performance. When the market peaked at the end of 2021, many investors were eager to invest more. At that time, if you asked investors […]
Investing Lessons Learned in 2020
2020 was a crazy year for investment markets. Covid was the first worldwide pandemic since the Spanish Flu over 100 years before. Markets were slow to react to the initial news about Covid, but once it became apparent that it would become a worldwide pandemic, markets reacted violently in late February and most of March. […]
Investment Math Doesn’t Add Up
The S&P 500 reached an all-time high on February 19. Since that time, we have seen one of the fastest declines in value followed by a rapid recovery. The S&P 500 (on a daily closing basis) was down 33.9% from February 19 to the low on March 23. Then, from March 23 to April 30, […]
This Is Not Your Grandfather’s Retirement
Planning for retirement is usually one of the primary goals in a financial plan. However, the concept of retirement is changing. Years ago, retirement was a clear concept. You worked for a company until you were 65 (or thereabouts), and then you never worked another day. If you lived on the East Coast, you moved […]