Running out of money during retirement is the greatest risk people take when they decide to stop working. The World Economic Forum has published new research that shows Americans aren't saving enough to cover the last decade or so of their retirement. That pales in comparison to the Japanese, who fail to save enough for the last two decades of their retirement. The only problem here for Americans though is that a big portion of that savings disparity comes because Japanese people are living so much longer, not because Americans are simply saving that much more. Bloomberg's Ben Steverman … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2019
Can You Lower Your Property Tax Bill in 8 Steps?
If you own real estate, you know that property taxes seem to rise continuously. Undoubtedly you have questioned if yours could be reduced. Fidelity has posted a guide that could help you lower yours. Sandra Block writes: Home values have risen across the country, which means many homeowners' property taxes are going up, too. The average annual property tax for owner-occupied single family homes nationwide in 2017 was $3,399, an effective tax rate of 1.17%, according to Attom Data Solutions. Nine counties impose average annual property taxes of $10,000 or more. In Westchester County, New … [Read more...]
Value Has Never Been Less Valued
Value stocks are trading at their steepest discounts to the market in history. Chris Matthews reports for MarketWatch: That’s according to an analysis by J.P. Morgan’s chief U.S. equity strategist, Dubravko Lakos-Bujas, who wrote in a Thursday note to clients that “value is currently trading at the biggest discount ever, and offers the largest premium over the last 30 years.” Value investing is a strategy whereby investors look for stocks that are underpriced relative to a fundamental analysis of the companies worth, and one that was made famous by Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren … [Read more...]
Volkswagen is About to Get its Own Gigafactory
When Tesla began building its gigafactory, the company's fans in the analyst world fawned over it. Now though, it is becoming clear that not only Tesla can have a gigafactory. The much longer established Volkswagen is preparing to build its own gigafactory in Germany. Electrek's Phil Dzikiy reports: Northvolt, a battery startup founded by two former Tesla executives, announced a $1 billion equity capital raise for its battery gigafactory in Sweden, in addition to a planned 50/50 joint venture with Volkswagen on another gigafactory in Germany. The funding, led … [Read more...]
Learn How Risk Reward & Time Are Related
You cannot possibly save properly for retirement without a thorough comprehension of the miracle of compound interest and the value of time. I like the materials Vanguard has prepared to introduce the risk, reward and time theory to retirement Investors. Click here to kick start your mission to retirement security. You will be glad you did. Originally posted on Young's World Money Forecast. … [Read more...]
Are You Sitting the Bench When You Should Be Winning the Game?
Last week I explained that I don’t miss the boat because I’m always in the boat. The post was an outline of my long-time philosophy for remaining fully invested so as not to miss the best times of market performance. My avoidance of market timing isn’t simply intuitive. In fact, in December 1991 I detailed some of the research on which I based that philosophy. I wrote: Your Biggest Mistake in Investing Is to Market Time You don’t want a fund that is an active trader. Market timing does not work; it’s a fool’s game. Forbes presented one version of the case well in its issue of 28 October … [Read more...]
Record Hiring in April
In April, businesses hired 5.9 million employees, the highest on record. Despite filling so many positions, there are still more jobs available than unemployed workers to fill them. You can see on my chart the demand for employees has been higher than the number of unemployed Americans since March of 2018. Bloomberg's Jeff Cox reports on the strong numbers for the economy: “In sum, the labor market remains strong and poised for continued solid job growth,” Ward McCarthy, chief financial U.S. economist at Jefferies, said in a note. “Despite the 21.4 [million] private sector jobs that … [Read more...]
Rise of the Bond Bots
The bond market, complex and illiquid, has always been tough for funds to crack. Now, a group of computer scientists is working on a way to use data and algorithms to do what has so far been unachievable. This all sounds good in theory, but is this just another case of investors being told "this time it's different?" How well will these algorithms hold up during a downturn, when the sample set of data for such an event is so small? Robin Wigglesworth and Laurence Fletcher report for the Financial Times: “This feels like the early days of the ‘quant’ equity industry,” says Paul Kamenski, … [Read more...]
You Can Run but You Can’t Hide from Stock Based Compensation
In the Financial Times, Aswath Damodaran explains why investors should be skeptical of stock based compensation. The use of stock based compensation is growing among public companies, and is especially prolific in the tech industry. Damodaran writes: As an investor, the two words that you should dread the most in a financial statement are “adjusted earnings”, as companies take accounting earnings and tweak them for sundry items. In the process, they almost always turn big losses into smaller ones, and losses into profits. One adjustment that is consistently made to get to adjusted … [Read more...]
Don’t Just Think About Retirement Planning, Act Now
According to a report from the TransAmerica Center for Retirement Studies Americans are concerned with their retirement, but they're not actually doing much about it. I urge you and anyone who hasn't already taken action toward planning for retirement to not wait, get to work now. FEDWeek reports: The report, based on polling samples of the baby boom, generation X and millennial generations, found that majorities of all three expect to have a harder time achieving financial security for retirement than their parents’ generation, with the younger two generations agreeing more strongly; and … [Read more...]