Bad times usually bring out gallows humor, and the recent bear market was no exception. Various versions of funny Wall Street definitions have appeared on the Internet and in print publications. Here are a few: Market correction: The day after you buy stocks. Broker: What your broker has made you. Standard & Poor: Your life in a nutshell. Value investing: The art of buying […]
Conventional wisdom pegs October as the worst month of the year for the stock market. It was in that month that the crashes of 1929 and 1987 occurred. But that wisdom is wrong: September has proved to be the worst month of the year, with the worst record over the past 50 years. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has […]
Your portfolio has endured one of the worst bear markets of the last 100 years. As bad as things seem, investors may have been handed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They shouldn’t blow it by becoming fixated on what’s happened to them. Unfortunately, investors frequently focus on what they paid for an investment, and fluctuations up or down from that initial price […]
I hope that you enjoyed the holiday season! In order to start this year on a positive note, I thought that it might help if we look at 2002 with the proper perspective. The chart below shows annualized investment returns for the major asset classes over three periods—one year, five years, and ten years (all of which end December 31, […]
