Bob's Journal
Found 464 Articles.
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Bob’s Journal for 5/9/2019
More Americans than ever are confident they will be able to live comfortably in retirement, but many of them could be fooling themselves. The percentage of retirees who are confident they’ll be able to live comfortably throughout retirement rose significantly from 2018 to 2019, according to the annual Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefits […]
Bob’s Journal for 5/2/19
Several stock indexes set new record closing highs in the last week, but not all the market data is positive. Most market observers look at data other than the levels of the indexes when assessing the markets. They look at data that collectively are known as market internals, technical factors or market action. Whatever you […]
Bob’s Journal for 4/25/19
Many investors misunderstand the recent changes in China’s economic policies, leading them to underestimate future growth. We recently added T. Rowe Price New Asia to some of our Retirement Watch portfolios, so it’s important to understand the changes. China tightened its economic policy about two years ago, because growth was higher than the country’s goals […]
Bob’s Journal for 4/18/19
The interest rate changes of the last few years tell an interesting story and provide lessons for later in 2019. One reason stocks and bonds appreciated following the financial crisis and especially from 2016-2018 is that the Fed tightened monetary policy much less than investors expected. After years of the Fed doing less than expected, […]
Bob’s Journal for 4/11/19
Closed-end mutual funds can increase your portfolio returns, but investing in them has an extra layer of risk. There’s a key distinction between closed-end mutual funds and the better-known open-end mutual funds. An open-end fund doesn’t have a fixed number of shares issued. Instead, at the end of each day, the fund company tallies the […]
Bob’s Journal for 4/4/2019
Housing is staging a comeback, and that’s likely to help economic growth the rest of the year. The Fed’s tighter monetary policy caused housing to stall for most of the last year or so. Sales and construction were down, and prices increased at a lower rate. After the Fed announced a pause in its tightening […]
Bob’s Journal for 3/28/19
Your retirement plan should assume inflation will be higher than the published numbers, whether you already are retired or still looking forward to it. The most widely cited measure of inflation is the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all urban consumers. This measure generally has been declining since it peaked in the early 1980s. In […]
Bob’s Journal for 3/21/19
Markets have been rallying, but investors don’t seem to be very bullish. Stock indexes, of course, have strong returns so far in 2019. The NASDAQ 100, as represented by the QQQ exchange-traded fund (ETF), is up about 14.5% for the year to date. The S&P 500 gained more than 12.5% and the Russell 2000 index […]
