If you don’t have time to fly to Vegas, there’s always options trading.
I WAS 51-years-old when I ate prime rib for the first time. As it turned out, it was a life-changing moment. It might be difficult to believe eating a choice cut of beef could lead to an altered understanding of financial priorities, but it did.
I grew up in a fairly typical 1970s middle class family. Hamburger Helper, tuna casserole and peanut butter sandwiches made up the bulk of my diet. Our family rarely ate out and,
MY BIGGEST initial mistake as a financial planner: underestimating the power of emotions. My office is located near top universities such as Harvard, MIT and Boston University. I assumed my well-educated clients, many with strong quantitative backgrounds, were simply looking to me for additional analytical insights.
Instead, my clients proved to be as human as everybody else. One top academic statistician, who claimed to be frugal and cautious, shared with me an annuity policy he purchased from a close friend at his church.
YOU’VE NO DOUBT heard this before: Asset allocation is the single most important investment decision. If you have the right mix of stocks, bonds, cash and maybe real estate, you sharply increase your chances of success.
But how do you pick the right mix? There are rules of thumb based on age, there’s a statistical approach called Modern Portfolio Theory, there are risk tolerance questionnaires and there are cash flow-based approaches. Each delivers a different answer—because each emphasizes different factors.
I’M A FAN of emerging stock markets—for two key reasons. But I also have qualms—for two key reasons.
Readers frequently write to me about emerging markets, and those messages usually coincide with periods of stomach-churning volatility, which is what we’ve witnessed recently: MSCI’s emerging markets index tumbled 15% in 2018 and was up just 4% in 2019’s first five months—after being up as much as 14% earlier this year. But as I tell my nervous correspondents,
I’VE BEEN READING about how people aren’t saving enough money, and how almost half of all Americans carry a balance on their credit cards. Looking to be more financially prudent? Here are 10 pointers on how to build wealth and gain financial security over your lifetime:
1. Save—for a reason. Saving money is the key to building a substantial portfolio. One secret to being a good saver: Have something worthwhile to save for. It might be homeownership or early financial independence.
IN EARLY MAY, I wrote about 16 ways that people waste money on everything from tattoos to shoes to children’s toys. That blog was subsequently posted on MarketWatch, where it collected almost 800 comments, most positive, but many not so much.
I was called out of touch, accused of having an entitlement mentality, talking down to people, privileged and more. I had clearly touched a nerve. Some commenters went into great detail about how difficult their lives were and how there was no money to waste.
OVER THE 15 YEARS through year-end 2018, 94% of actively managed U.S. stock funds lagged behind the broad market—even after adjusting for risk, calculates S&P Dow Jones Indices.
NO. 66: TWENTY stocks aren’t enough. One rule says you need 20 stocks to be diversified. With that many, your portfolio’s volatility won’t be much greater than the broad market’s. Problem is, you might still earn returns that differ radically from the market averages. To avoid this tracking error, you need to own hundreds of stocks.
PUT RETIREMENT first. Are you socking away at least 12% of your pretax income toward retirement, including any matching contribution to your employer’s retirement plan? To amass enough for retirement, you may need to throttle back other financial ambitions, including the size of the house you buy and how much you help your kids with college costs.
SKEWNESS. The most a stock can lose is 100%, but its potential gain is unlimited. Every year, a minority of stocks with huge returns skew the market higher, so most stocks end up trailing the averages. The irony: The big winners make beating the market seem easy—and yet betting on a handful of stocks will likely result in market-lagging performance.
I WAS 51-years-old when I ate prime rib for the first time. As it turned out, it was a life-changing moment. It might be difficult to believe eating a choice cut of beef could lead to an altered understanding of financial priorities, but it did.
I grew up in a fairly typical 1970s middle class family. Hamburger Helper, tuna casserole and peanut butter sandwiches made up the bulk of my diet. Our family rarely ate out and,
MY BIGGEST initial mistake as a financial planner: underestimating the power of emotions. My office is located near top universities such as Harvard, MIT and Boston University. I assumed my well-educated clients, many with strong quantitative backgrounds, were simply looking to me for additional analytical insights.
Instead, my clients proved to be as human as everybody else. One top academic statistician, who claimed to be frugal and cautious, shared with me an annuity policy he purchased from a close friend at his church.
YOU’VE NO DOUBT heard this before: Asset allocation is the single most important investment decision. If you have the right mix of stocks, bonds, cash and maybe real estate, you sharply increase your chances of success.
But how do you pick the right mix? There are rules of thumb based on age, there’s a statistical approach called Modern Portfolio Theory, there are risk tolerance questionnaires and there are cash flow-based approaches. Each delivers a different answer—because each emphasizes different factors.
I’M A FAN of emerging stock markets—for two key reasons. But I also have qualms—for two key reasons.
Readers frequently write to me about emerging markets, and those messages usually coincide with periods of stomach-churning volatility, which is what we’ve witnessed recently: MSCI’s emerging markets index tumbled 15% in 2018 and was up just 4% in 2019’s first five months—after being up as much as 14% earlier this year. But as I tell my nervous correspondents,
I’VE BEEN READING about how people aren’t saving enough money, and how almost half of all Americans carry a balance on their credit cards. Looking to be more financially prudent? Here are 10 pointers on how to build wealth and gain financial security over your lifetime:
1. Save—for a reason. Saving money is the key to building a substantial portfolio. One secret to being a good saver: Have something worthwhile to save for. It might be homeownership or early financial independence.
IN EARLY MAY, I wrote about 16 ways that people waste money on everything from tattoos to shoes to children’s toys. That blog was subsequently posted on MarketWatch, where it collected almost 800 comments, most positive, but many not so much.
I was called out of touch, accused of having an entitlement mentality, talking down to people, privileged and more. I had clearly touched a nerve. Some commenters went into great detail about how difficult their lives were and how there was no money to waste.
OVER THE 15 YEARS through year-end 2018, 94% of actively managed U.S. stock funds lagged behind the broad market—even after adjusting for risk, calculates S&P Dow Jones Indices.
NO. 43: IF OUR GOAL is investment growth, we should almost never buy insurance products. That means no cash-value life insurance, costly variable annuities or indexed annuities.
PUT RETIREMENT first. Are you socking away at least 12% of your pretax income toward retirement, including any matching contribution to your employer’s retirement plan? To amass enough for retirement, you may need to throttle back other financial ambitions, including the size of the house you buy and how much you help your kids with college costs.
NO. 66: TWENTY stocks aren’t enough. One rule says you need 20 stocks to be diversified. With that many, your portfolio’s volatility won’t be much greater than the broad market’s. Problem is, you might still earn returns that differ radically from the market averages. To avoid this tracking error, you need to own hundreds of stocks.
SKEWNESS. The most a stock can lose is 100%, but its potential gain is unlimited. Every year, a minority of stocks with huge returns skew the market higher, so most stocks end up trailing the averages. The irony: The big winners make beating the market seem easy—and yet betting on a handful of stocks will likely result in market-lagging performance.