THE WAY INVESTORS think about the stock market may be entirely wrong.
Intuition tells us, and academic research confirms, that a company’s stock price should respond to important news and information. When a company announces a new product, for example, its stock should go up. And when results fall short of expectations, it should decline. 
But a new paper titled “The Inefficient Pricing of News” calls this idea into question. The authors found that investors respond much more slowly and inconsistently to market news than previously thought.

A article in the NYTs says “Many people are not aware IRAs exist.”  Can that be true? I bet it is.
One survey reports the median worker has only $955 saved for retirement. Another says 1 in 5 Americans over 50 has no retirement savings.Some people push for a national IRA with auto enrollment because people don’t have access at work. 
I find that curious because as you know there are individual IRAs, ROTH IRAs, SEP IRAs (Simplified Employee Pension),

Possibly a misuse of the term, in its strict financial sense. Anyhow…
For decades I’ve heard about the value or use of leverage. It’s most easily recognized in our homes, often bought with a small down payment and a big loan, so that even minor increases in home value in early years create impression of a big return on our actual expenditure.
Yet last year, when I took on several major home “repairs” (a loose term for work that included demolishing and rebuilding a decrepit garage),

The door bell rang unexpectedly three times in three days. The first on Wednesday, was a couple high school kids trying to drum up some window washing jobs. They seemed like good kids, and after telling them I already had cleaners, I felt sort of bad sending them away empty handed. I hope they get some jobs in the neighborhood.
The second ring, on Thursday, was from a guy selling exterminator services. Pretty quickly he launched into his spiel,

Most investors understand risk-adjusted return. I’m guessing few apply it to the way they earn the money in the first place. That gap, between what you made and what it actually cost to make it, is where some of the most important financial decisions of a life get made without anyone really noticing.
Take my friend as an example. He’s lived a remarkably colourful life. He served in the UK equivalent of Force Recon: small teams,

A $300 a week drug habit.
Over a year, it’s more than $15,000.
Over a decade, it’s well into six figures.
Over a lifetime, the total can be staggering.
After my sister died from a fentanyl overdose last year, I found out the cost of her addiction.
Then I realized I was measuring the wrong loss.
Some struggles arrive suddenly. Others quietly settle into a family and remain there for decades.
My sister struggled with addiction from her teenage years onward.

When I took at look at the data I was a bit surprised. We hear a lot about the US being the richest country in the world, but the data was a shock.
Using a global measure, it’s not hard to be wealthy.
These figures come from global income distribution analyses and calculators using World Bank and UN data.
Net worth
Based on the latest global income and wealth distribution data, the approximate cutoffs for the 50th,

If submissions could be anonymous, it would be very interesting to learn about the demographics of the HD readership.   For example ;
current age,
female or male,
primary occupation (either present or past),
age at retirement (if retired),
net worth (excluding cars and primary residence- other real estate holdings can be included,
etc…..
Editor(s) – is there a way to do this ?

Your 35 years of earnings is what determines you social security benefit, not the taxes paid. Here is why.
✔️ Your benefits are paid for life and perhaps to a survivor. Your benefits don’t stop when you have received all you paid in FICA taxes – roughly after collecting benefits for 6 years.
✔️ The SSA averages your highest 35-years of earnings and then adjusts them to reflect the growth in wages using the AWI – average wage index.

I’m writing this in our sunroom. From here I can hear my wife Suzie and my four-year-old granddaughter in another room, deep in earnest conversation about fairies. Through the window I can see my grandson in the garden, alternating between kicking a soccer ball and shooting hoops. In the kitchen, one of my daughters sits quietly tying bows onto favours for her upcoming wedding.
A very domestic scene.
But to me, this moment is worth more than the entire value of my investment portfolio.

Here are the results of an exercise to make Social Security last at least 75 more years. I used the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) estimator.
✔️Increase the payroll tax rate by 2% shared by employers (1% each) or raise the 2% only on employers
✔️Eliminate the taxable wage cap, and also accrue additional benefits based on those taxed earnings using a 15% accrual rate. The same percentage as the lowest accrual or “bend point” uses now.

Credit to John Mauldin and Ed Yardeni:

The three-week war in Iran is now 3.5 months, and there is zero consensus among people that I pay attention to as to when it will end. The Strait of Hormuz has been closed for weeks. As noted last week, Treasuries now come with an asterisk. China is building production capacity designed to permanently close the door on Western industry in thirty critical sectors. And the S&P 500 is up 17% in four weeks.

I OPENED MY FIRST bank account in the US at a local credit union (CU) close to my workplace. The CU had several convenient offers for employees of our company. With minimal effort, I opened checking and savings accounts, got free checkbooks and a credit card despite having no credit history in the US.
I was so pleased with the convenience that I handled all my banking needs through this CU for many years.

EARLIER THIS SPRING, Emil Verner, an economist at MIT, made an observation: The stock market, he said, seemed to be exhibiting “excess tranquility.” Despite an ongoing war, inflation and other negative headlines, investors seemed surprisingly unfazed. The market was on track for its fourth year in a row of positive returns. Through May, it had gained 11%.
But no sooner did Verner make this observation that the market did begin to wobble. Last Friday,

I know the HD readers have much in common. I’m interested to find out about our diversity.
What I’m interested in, is not the size of anyone’s portfolio, but it’s contents.
If your portfolio is a thousand, a million, or even multi millions doesn’t matter…. What is it invested in and it’s percentages.
As an example I would answer this inquiry I know that basically VUG and VTV are VOO (V Vanguard S&P 500). My wife who doesn’t really understand etf’s said it’s always done so well we should keep it.