(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 …
As the election results were tallied past midnight Tuesday, I was struck by how the results really would not make much difference for my investments over the next four years, the next decade or the rest of my life. That’s not because the president can’t do good things or that the election results won’t impact …
Every four years, as the Presidential election winds down, Americans let the rhetoric and the headlines make them gloomy about the post-vote economy. Not surprisingly, this year and this election are different, sort of. For years, Bankrate.com has surveyed Americans about the biggest threats to the U.S. economy over the coming six months, and the …
I make a lot of plans and try to do a lot, but having a heart attack in my 40s was not part of any plan. With terrible family cardiac history and my own weight problem, I can’t say I never foresaw the possibility – even, perhaps, the probability – but it was the last …
The mailbag is full of notes from people with all-too-common financial dilemmas these days. I’ll try to help some of the letter writers in the hope that the answers help you too. Question from David H. in Short Pump, Va.: When I lost my job early in the pandemic, there seemed to be a lot …
Many traditions have been lost to the coronavirus pandemic this year, but my hope throughout the summer has been that Halloween might be spared. Since 2016 at my house, instead of “Trick or treat?” the question has been “Cash or Candy?” It’s become a fun, fabulous and favorite personal tradition, where I help neighborhood kids …
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 …
(This column was released for publication on Sept. 16, 2020.) Darren in Brusly, La., is worried for his job in the coronavirus pandemic and is hoping to “protect” his credit score “in case anything bad happens” at work. He wrote me asking if there was any way to pay the keepers of credit scores …
