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Will the Stock Market Reverse Again?

March 23, 2016

Stock indexes opened 2016 with a steep decline. They reached a bottom on February 11 and rapidly retraced much of their start-of-the-year losses. What’s next. This statistics blog argues that another rapid decline is likely the next move. Take a look at his data and arguments, and see if you agree. In the 25 trading […]

Does the Stock Market accurately predict the Economy?

March 14, 2016

Media reports usually try to interpret the latest market results by telling us what they mean about the economy or something else. In other words, the market is said to be an information processing machine, and we need only to know how to interpret what it says. Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital disagrees. In his […]

Working With the New Social Security Rules

January 1, 2016

Plans need to be revised for those who haven’t begun claiming their Social Security retirement benefits. As we covered last month, Congress eliminated a couple of strategies that could increase lifetime benefits for savvy married couples by tens of thou-sands of dollars. Social Security benefits still are an important part of your retirement plan. The […]

The New Social Security Claiming Rules

December 1, 2015

Congress snuck a major change to Social Security benefits claiming strategies in the latest budget, known as the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015. The change is likely to cost retirees who would have planned carefully tens of thousands of dollars over their lifetimes. The loss is about $50,000 per couple, according to a Bloomberg.com estimate. […]

Social Security, Inflation, and Interest Rates

July 1, 2015

Many people benefit from delaying their Social Security retirement benefits until at least full retirement age. Delaying until age 70 can be an even better deal. For years I’ve shown people how to calculate the difference using what I call the quick-and-dirty method. The method involves calculating how many years you need to live after […]

Another Reason to Ignore Stock Market Forecasts

May 20, 2015

Late each year and early the following year, the economists and analysts air out their forecasts for the coming year. Each year, almost all the stock market forecasts are for returns in the high single digits (8% to 10%). That’s the long-term average annualized return. The funny thing is, these forecasts are way off the […]

Estimating Future Stock Returns

April 15, 2015

A major debate among stock analysts these days is the level of future returns that is reasonable to expect. Some argue that despite high valuations and profit margins today other factors will allow stocks to appreciate near historic average levels for the coming 10 years or so. Others argue that future returns have been pulled […]

Some Fallacies of the S&P 500

April 7, 2015

This post notes that the S&P 500 wasn’t always capitalization weighted. Until 1988 it was structured much like the Dow Jones Industrial Average but with more companies. There are a lot of thoughts that can spring from that information. One of them is that index investing isn’t really passive investing. It’s true that most active […]

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