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 …
Keith is a friend from the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania whose family is living both ends of the pandemic financial life through his adult twins. It’s a quirky story that’s about to take its next turn with the latest stimulus check from the federal government. Both of Keith’s 24-year-old children moved home within the …
Most people can remember exactly where they were when the stock market suffered its biggest one-day point decline ever. That’s not because the day was particularly memorable but more because it happened about a year ago, on March 16, 2020, early in the coronavirus pandemic when almost everyone had shut things down at home. Were …
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 …
You can’t get revenge against the pandemic, no matter how much money you spend. Yet as we get closer to a time when people feel they can return to a more normal life, there has been plenty of talk about how they will break loose with their money. For people still feeling like they are …
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 …
In the alphabet soup of typical economic recoveries – think V-shaped, or W, Z, U and L – the one thing that’s common to the ending is that, for better or worse, everyone comes out together, at the same spot in the curve. The Covid-19 economy, however, is creating a K-shaped recovery, and it’s growing …
So you missed out on the $865 million Mega Millions jackpot on Tuesday. I know, because you’re here reading this. You’re not beating the 1-in-292 million odds and winning the $730-plus million Powerball jackpot being drawn Wednesday, either. Some things don’t change in the middle of a global pandemic, like your lottery luck or the …
