Two recent surveys highlight problems that American consumers and investors are having now, not with the market but with their own behavior. Finding the real lessons in each of these studies involves looking past the headlines and digging deeper, so let’s pick up the shovel and search for the hidden gems that people should really …
Jack is a recent college grad who did some work for me around the yard when he was in high school. I bumped into him the other day and, after a brief talk about his collegiate sports career, the conversation quickly turned to money. He was particularly proud of having bought his first individual stock …
At a time when many Americans seem obsessed with shutting out messages and viewpoints they don’t support and believe in, I found it refreshing last week to chat with a guy who most optimists and long-term investors either disbelieve or hate. Harry S. Dent Jr. has been a soothsayer of sadness and gloom for ages …
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’ve probably heard the investing adage that “It’s not a stock market, it’s a market of stocks.” The idea is that when the market is described with adjectives like “jittery,” “booming,” “steady” or “volatile,” the experience in any individual issue may vary dramatically from that broad, average depiction. Indexes are useful barometers for the market …
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 …
The action surrounding GameStop stock, the Robinhood trading app and short-selling in general have raised questions in the minds of many investors. Here are a few of them that were sent my way. From Paul in Seattle: Settle an argument between me and my son. He started investing using Robinhood. I have been invested for …
For the first time in their lives, my daughters last week wished they had been into video games when they were kids. Had that been their interest, their stock portfolios might have included GameStop shares. “And now we’d be rich,” my oldest daughter, said in a group text with me and her younger sister, imagining …
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 …
