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 …
(This column was released for publication on Nov. 26, 2020.) The Dow Jones Industrial Average wasn’t really reacting to cabinet appointments or potential vaccines when it broke through 30,000 and held that level for the first time on Tuesday. The famed benchmark isn’t a sentient being; it reflects the headlines and underlying economic and financial …
Last week, in describing gifts of stock as “the ultimate 2020 holiday gift,” I acted as if shares are a kind of one-size-fits-all item. Yes, you pick individual companies, but that’s not much different from selecting the color on a more conventional gift. But the questions I got prove that giving stocks for the holidays …
You’ve heard a lot this year about how hard it can be for youngsters to get a good education when they’re not in the classroom. But this year also has brought investors what amounts to the greatest home-teaching tool the stock market has ever seen, and the perfect gift to give your favorite young investor …
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 …
The stock market has returned to record levels, powered by a few of the world’s biggest and best-known companies. That has spawned talk of how it’s a “stock-picker’s market.” Poppycock. The market observers who say this drivel aren’t particularly observant, or they would have long ago noticed that good stock-picking never goes out of style. …
My father owned ExxonMobil stock. It was his idea of what a blue-chip looked like. He would have been a bit blue himself this week with the news that the company is getting booted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and I can’t help think that the conversation and process I would have run through …
Have you seen the reports about how people have been drinking more alcohol than normal during the pandemic? You can find proof of the trend by asking investors what they expect the stock market to be going forward, because it’s clear that they’re drunk on the market’s rally from the February lows and blotto on …
