Monday, November 25, 2024
It’s a giant leap from having your money handled by a professional money manager to following the ETF recommendations from your company’s 401k provider and making your own investment decisions. How stocks, bonds, and funds work is complicated, and decisions about what to invest in have consequences. When stock prices rise, it’s easy to feel […]
The rate of home purchases has slowed dramatically. Since the start of the year, mortgage rates have doubled from around 3% to more than 6%. The affordability of homes has plummeted, as have sales. Yet individuals and families still have to live somewhere, so slowing home sales will benefit companies with residential rentals. Here are […]
The combination of rising living costs due to inflation and crappy stock market results have many people rethinking their retirement plans. Here are a couple of recent excerpts from the financial press. This headline comes from CNBC: 25% of Americans are delaying retirement due to inflation, survey finds Then there’s this excerpt from a Wall […]
High inflation has become a driving force in our lives. It’s challenging to invest for income and keep up with inflation, especially outside of commodity-focused investments. We have to take an extra step to ferret out investments that will perform well while inflation stays high. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve will need higher interest rates to […]
Through the first five months of 2022, the energy and utilities stock market sectors are the only ones in the black. And the energy returns dwarf the 3.8% posted by utilities. The other nine S&P-defined sectors are negative for the year, with five sectors down more than 10% and three down more than 20%. With […]
The pace of existing and new home sales has started to slow dramatically. Sales of existing homes fell 2.4% for April compared to March, and were down 5.9% to a year earlier. New home sales fell even harder, with April sales off 16.6% compared to March, and down 26.9% year-over-year. Rising mortgage rates thanks to […]
In a market like this, share prices are down across the board, and high-quality monthly income stocks become great bargains for investors focused on the long term. While there are many choices for income investors to grab a great deal on dividend-paying stocks, I like to use these market correction opportunities to pick up shares […]
It doesn’t take much time on Google before you find headlines like these: The Last Thing the Polarized US Needs Is a Spike in Food Prices and a Collapse In 401(k)s… It’ll Probably Get Both (source) Financial expert urges caution as $7T stock market slump sends 401(k)s tanking and some joke their retirement accounts are […]
With my conservative investment strategies, I do not have much reason to worry about the current stock market correction. I know that if I accumulate dividend-paying shares for cheap while others are selling, my income and wealth will be much greater when the market recovers. And it always recovers. I am, however, concerned about a […]
For investors, energy companies have been the bright spot in a very dark 2022 stock market. The Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE) is up 43% year-to-date, while the broad-coverage (including energy) SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) has dropped by 18%. Energy companies divide into three sectors: upstream, midstream, and downstream. So far this year, […]
