I received a question after my last post regarding bonds and just to clarify, I was referring to owning individual bonds. The person that asked the question, like many investors, has exposure to bonds in his portfolio via bond funds which can be a mutual fund, exchange traded fund (ETF) or closed-end fund, so I…
Retirement Planning, Part 3: Retirement Income from Bond Interest & Dividends
I spoke with a client earlier this week who called to make sure he’s doing everything needed to retire on time. He was recently surprised to hear that a family member who retired a few years ago needed to go back to work. My client wanted to make sure he’s on track and saving enough…
Interesting Initial Reaction to this Week’s Fed Meeting
Wednesday was new Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s first meeting at the helm. Stocks sold off pretty hard after the announcement but rebounded yesterday. Neither action was very surprising; stocks are still quite over-extended and investors seem to have a quick trigger finger looking for any reason to sell and take profits. At the same…
Where Will Stocks Go Moving Forward?
It was an odd week for the stock market and I’m not yet seeing the things I would like to for confirmation that stocks should move higher. We’ll see where things take us in the week ahead. Here’s a video discussing the the things I’m watching: I hope everyone has a great weekend…
Why the Stock Market is Falling
Thanks to everyone who has participated in the survey! I received a suggestion asking to talk more about what is driving markets in the short-term. For example, why were stocks down yesterday. Here’s a short video looking at the investment capital flows over the past few weeks. It shows that we had a very strong…
The Investment Markets in 2014
2013 was certainly an eventful year both politically and economically and I think 2014 will prove to be just as interesting. The biggest concern I see over the next year is the amount of civil unrest that is building. For some reason governments think corruption and higher taxes will go unnoticed… In 2013, we saw…
Market Trends
This morning’s market reactions to the unexpected jobs number gave me even more conviction that the current capital trends are in place. Gold, bonds and currencies all moved in anticipation of further Fed easing, while stocks did not. For a while now, bad news has been good news for stocks because it has meant continued/more…
Bonds & Rates
A very important part of investing is recognizing when you’re wrong as quickly as possible to minimize losses. After watching Bernanke’s Q&A session yesterday after the close, I’m ready to admit I was wrong on interest rates. I’ve never seen someone stumble through questions like that before. It was almost hard to watch! It’s as…