Do you still have some lazy cash sitting around after the holidays? It’s time to get it up and moving, especially with interest rates and dividend yields you can sink your teeth into. And this has nothing to do with predictions for 2024. I’m simply looking at the lay of the land and like what I see in both bonds and stocks. Your key to retirement success is coming up with a plan you can live with. Remember all those years ago when you purchased your first home and wondered how you’d make the payments? I know you don’t want to have to do that again. But what you did then was develop a plan … [Read more...]
Your Survival Guy Talking Money with His Daughter
Your Survival Guy was talking about money with his daughter over the holidays. And it wasn’t exactly the conversation I was expecting to have. You see when I logged into my accounts, I didn’t see what I was expecting to see. Usually, I have access to both of my kids’ UGMA accounts. I’ve been managing them for years. When I attempted to pull hers up, a caption box appeared instructing me to contact my representative. “That’s not good,” I thought to myself. “Have we been hacked?” thinking the worst. Your Survival Guy called, and then it hit me. “Sir, your daughter is of age. She’s … [Read more...]
Your Investing Success in 2024 May Rely on This
Your success as an investor has much to do with your temperament. It’s more art than science. That’s not coming from me. That’s from years of reading my father-in-law’s newsletter, Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report. He’s pulled me aside many a time to remind me: “Survival Guy, listen to me, investing is more about art than science. Yes, you’ve got to have the chops, but it’s the art that makes the music.” And here we are at the national anthem stage of 2024. And yes, it’s been a wild couple of years for the S&P 500. Sort of reminds me of the Daytona 500, with investors circling … [Read more...]
Read: Your Lesson About Investment Planning for 2024
Investors have a short-term memory. They forget about the disasters. Because they read, and read, and read in search of the next big thing. And they think they have found it. And then, poof, the black swan swoops in, and those gains are washed away with the tide. Luckily for you, you have Your Survival Guy to remind you of how brutal markets can be. Take last year, for example. Everyone’s talking stocks again. But dig a little deeper, and we have an important lesson playing out in real-time. I’m talking about the arithmetic of losses. Lose 50%, and you need a 100% gain to get back to where … [Read more...]
You May Recall the Death of Balanced Investing
You may recall the death of balanced investing. It was all over the place as interest rates were reset to a more palatable level. Did Your Survival Guy recommend selling out? Of course not. The balanced approach never goes out of style for me, a patient, well-tempered investor. Let’s not forget how far we’ve come with interest rates. And let’s not forget how much debt we’re looking at now as a country. Even if stocks continue their climb, isn’t it reasonable to believe this can’t go on forever? Which leads to the question: Survival Guy what do we do? It’s hard to just stand … [Read more...]
The #1 Tool Used to Snag Investors
One of the many pitfalls for the investor, and there are many, is the lure of past performance. Past performance is the rock that catches many a ship. Even when the investor might know better, the false confidence that past performance provides can be ruinous. With all the information out there today, it never fails to amaze me how reckless investors can be by betting their savings on yesterday’s winners. If you’ve ever been stuck in the fog, you know what I’m talking about. You think you’re in one place, and when it clears, you can’t believe where you are. What we imagine, or what we … [Read more...]
Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises
As a reminder of how ugly markets can be, this holiday season, Your Survival Guy’s been thumbing through Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (fourth edition) by Charles P. Kindleberger. I’ll offer some titles that also work: Bad Stuff Happens, Look Out Below, They Never Learn. The first edition was published in 1978 with plenty of pre-World War II disasters to cover. But what has me thinking this morning is that the latest one, the fourth edition, was written in 2000 before the dot com crash. Little did Kindleberger know what was about to take place, or did he sense … [Read more...]
A Stock Market Boom or Bust for 2024?
Your Survival Guy received some Christmas emails asking about a certain economist’s stock market prediction that the bubble’s about to burst. My take? Why ruin Christmas? Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong. What I know for sure is he’s in the business of selling books and making headlines. That’s not acting like a fiduciary. I remember back in 1998 when this same economist wrote a book calling for the roaring 2000s. The roar turned out to be the sound from investors pummeled by the tech bust a few years later. Then he called for, in 2004, another boom to come, taking a pass on the … [Read more...]
The Coaches
“As Florida State linebackers coach in 1972, Bill Parcells read the preface for Bill Libby’s The Coaches, published that year by Regnery. Feeling that it eloquently described his profession, Parcells condensed the 1,039-word introduction into roughly 390 words that hit home the most. The coach laminated the shortened version. Throughout his long football career, he re-read it, especially during tough times. Below is the exact wording from Parcells’s sheet,” from Parcells: A Football Life, by Bill Parcells and Nunyo Demasio. He is called “Coach.” It is a difficult job, and there is no clear … [Read more...]
Investing Habits of the Fairly Wealthy: #1 Y-O-U
The investing world lost our Confucius, Charlie Munger, this year. His words of wisdom were the fortune cookies of finance—short and sweet. Perfect sized treats in a world overstuffed with information. Munger said: “When you mix raisins and turds, you've still got turds.” “People calculate too much and think too little.” “A lot of our respected financial institutions are just casinos in drag.” “Step by step you get ahead, but rarely in fast spurts.” Munger, with his billions in wealth, put his money where his mouth was, a rarity in a “look at me” Tik Tok world. He lived in the same … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- …
- 68
- Next Page »