Happy Independence Day Weekend! We’ll be up at my brother’s lake place this weekend, so I thought I’d shoot out an early post before the festivities begin. While we’re out enjoying brats on the grill, boats on the water, and fireworks in the sky, our Congress will be wrestling with getting a reconciled budget passed in Washington DC. I’m sure the fact that it is … Continue reading Happy InDEBTpendence Day …
It’s good to see the stock market trending up after the chaos of the initial Trump tariff actions this year. The S&P 500 today sits up +2.6% from where it started the year. Still, I’m not quite sure how to read my portfolio. The bond side of our holdings are flat, but the US Dollar – which all of these investments are enumerated in – … Continue reading Investment Returns vs Dollar Strength
A few readers / friends sent me this cheeky t-shirt image, celebrating the stock market’s quick bounce-back from the Trump tariffs. Folks thought I was too negative about Trump’s move to correct long-standing “trade imbalances” – even though my official investor position was to “stay the course”. Related: Stay The Course Still, I thought it was important to acknowledge that the S&P 500 has quickly … Continue reading Trump Tariff Bounceback
The stock market was relatively flat over the last week with investors still try to puzzle their way through the Trump/GOP approach to tariffs, taxes, debt, and new statements on inflation & interest rates from the Fed. Our neighborhood investor club members were as puzzled as anyone when we met for the last meeting of the Spring. Everyone had their own take on what was … Continue reading Crystal Ball Predictions: Investor Club Input
Even before Trump “paused” his questionable trade policy yesterday, Wall Street analysts offered updated projections for where they thought the stock market would finish up the year. The S&P 500 started the year at 5,869 and had dipped below 5,000 (-15%) after Trump’s 10% minimum tariff and demand for balancing trade deficits. Still, most investment banks were quite positive in their forecasts for where the … Continue reading Crystal Ball Predictions
Plenty of people are running scared after the bears trampled -10.5% out of Wall Street on Thursday & Friday. I’m not sure what will happen to the S&P 500 on Monday morning (futures are -2.5% as I write this on Sunday night), but I’m keeping the faith that some order will be restored over the next few weeks, months, and years. If you saved for … Continue reading Staying The Course …
Just a short, early end-of-the-week post today. I’m trying to make sense of the headlines coming out of Washington DC. I think it’s safe to say that they are more nonsense than common sense. It’s no surprise that the market is in a bit of a free-fall today. How do these make sense …. ? I don’t follow this … If we’re getting $7T in … Continue reading Stormy Fiscal Headlines
Our neighborhood in Florida has a weekly “Investment Club” that I went to this past Friday. There were about 15 people gathered when I got there – in the events ballroom of our clubhouse. We started by talking about our 2025 expectations for the stock market’s growth. After two years of incredible growth (+23% in 2024, +24% in 2023), most people were expecting growth in … Continue reading Investment Club
Everyone is a genius in a bull market, and we’ve had a nice run over the last 10 years. The S&P 500 has grown from 2000 to 6000 over that period of time for a healthy +11.6% growth rate. The last 10 years have been amazing: 2024: 23.3%, 2023: 24.2%, 2022: -19.4%, 2021: 26.9%, 2020: 16.3%, 2019: 28.9%, 2018: -6.2%, 2017: 19.4%, 2016: 9.5%, 2015: … Continue reading Bulls & Bears
I went deep down the Social Security benefit timing rabbit hole this week. I built a little spreadsheet to look at SSI lifetime benefit at different “start ages” and added in the value of taking SSI pre-age 67 and investing it. These are my currently projected benefits from the MySocialSecurity website. I assumed a conservative 3% investment return on the early dollars. You can see … Continue reading One More Look At Early SSI …
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