When I was at MegaCorp, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Bob Johnson, the wildly successful founder of BET Television. Johnson was on our board of directors and I was on-hand to present an initiative at their offsite meeting. Johnson is a dynamic character and I’ve followed him through the media for the last 10+ years. He’s not afraid to jump into politics … Continue reading 401k Focus
My wife & I took her Dad’s collection of old coins to an appraiser last week. Her father had collected them his whole life. We weren’t at all sure how much they might be worth. We learned a lot about the state of coin collecting today from the floor manager. It turns out, it’s not good. Not many young people are collecting coins anymore, they … Continue reading Collecting Coins?
The failure of the Silicon Valley Bank – and subsequent other banks – garnered all of the headlines this week. Like many of you, I’m sure, my simple response was to double-check that none of our bank accounts had more than the FDIC $250K in them. I didn’t expect we had that much parked anywhere, but worth double-checking, I figured. We were, as expected, good. … Continue reading Banking Mess Involvement
Tech stocks have weighed so heavily on the market in 2022, there is a strange disconnect between the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500, average, and the NASDAQ index. – Dow Jones -5% YTD – S&P 500 -15% YTD – NASDAQ -27% I am guessing we have not seen a split like this since the ‘dot-com boom’ busted in the year 2000. Statistics show … Continue reading Time For A Santa Rally?
My son sent me this hopeful chart today. It shows how the stock market has fared following a 25% decline in the S&P 500 over the last 70 years. Of course, as they say, past performance is no predictor of future performance. Still, it is nice to see that big market drops have historically turned back to growth rather quickly. I had hoped that our … Continue reading When Will It Turn?
We’ve had a new round of bad economic news, but I can’t get too excited about it, even though it seems like a pretty severe storm. I think I’ve fallen victim to “bad news fatigue” after two years of the pandemic, rising inflation & interest rates, and declining investments. Just in the last couple weeks … ⁃ The stock market erased all the gains since … Continue reading Weathering The Storm
If I had only paid more attention to my own behavior, I would probably be a much better investor. I noticed on the Amazon website that it lists your annual orders under the ‘purchase history’ feature. My own use of Amazon seems to mirror their stock performance. As I jumped from just 3-5 orders a year to over 100, their stock shot from $12 a … Continue reading Amazon Explosion
It’s hard to find good financial news lately, so today I thought I would take a step back and look at a longer period of time. It’s easy to get get caught up in the day-to-day headlines, but if you are going to reach financial independence and retire early (FIRE), you have to be focused on the big picture. The chart below shows the S&P … Continue reading Taking The Long View
They say, “a stitch in time, saves nine,” but sometimes waiting to do something pays off even bigger. In investing, it’s a bit of luck. My broker had been calling over the last 8 weeks to ask what we wanted to do with a big chunk of cash that came our way through a real estate sale. I’m lucky I didn’t decide what to do … Continue reading Timing Your Stitches In The Stock Market
I’ve written before about cryptocurrencies when they were growing, so I thought it only right that I also comment on them when they are falling. Bitcoin is now trading at less than half of what it was at last November. It’s gone from a peak of $69K/coin down to just $30K. That’s a sad drop for a digital currency that was supposed to help protect … Continue reading Are Cryptos Blowing Away?
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