Wander through a cemetery and you’ll frequently see phrases like “forever in our hearts” or “You will always be remembered.” The cemetery of mutual funds is devoid of such loving reminiscences, but if you look at the latest monuments – to funds that passed in 2021 – you will see a number of recurring descriptions, …
Walking my dog through the neighborhood last week, I came upon a friend who gave me his standard greeting for these occasional chance walk-bys: “What do you like in the market right now?” He knows I’m not handing out stock tips, but he usually follows it up by name-dropping, or we’ll spend a few moments …
The big financial headline this week is the unveiling of the first-ever bitcoin-linked exchange-traded fund, which made its debut on Tuesday. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (ticker: BITO) is a possible game-changer and can be looked at in many ways, but it’s not the bitcoin fund investors have been waiting and hoping for. Plenty of …
At some point in the not-too-distant future, the last year of stock market gains will be a footnote to history. Rebounding from a precipitous drop as the world lurched into the pandemic in March of 2020, the stock market reversed course and gained more than 50 percent, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500, …
One positive side effect of the pandemic is that people stuck at home started investing. According to a recent new survey from Charles Schwab & Co., 15 percent of all current U.S. stock market investors say they first began investing in 2020. Schwab tabbed that group of investors as Generation Investor or Generation I, but …
One year ago this week, the shortest bear market on record bottomed out. Stocks lost 34 percent from the penthouse on February 20 to the outhouse on March 23, a span of just 33 days. The coronavirus in that time was going from a worry to a pandemic and, as a result, the economy was …
You don’t have to be a trader to be affected by them, and these days the chances that you will be are growing. A combination of factors are driving that: heightened interest in and trading action around “story stocks,” fewer stocks to trade, easy access to trading tools creating more active investors and more. Throughout …
Steve in Daytona Beach Shores, Fla., a self-described patriot, says that after watching the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, he wondered for the first time in his adult life if he should “Invest American.” Throughout his decades as an investor, Steve has tried to buy American and invest in domestic companies. His …
(This column was released for publication on Dec. 30, 2020.) In a year filled with entirely too much death, no one should mourn the passing of a mutual fund. Funds and ETFs don’t deserve your grief. They’re useful tools, not friends or loved ones, even when they help you succeed. Hundreds of them die every …
Just like seemingly everything else in 2020, the market has been a place for extremes. From February 20 through March 23 this year, the stock market – as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500 – lost 33 percent of its value. It then gained over 60 percent from that March low to the start …
