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
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
Amid all of the rapid-fire tax proposals during election season, I missed one that would affect us: Trump flip flopping on his own SALT (State & Local Tax) deduction cap. When they put together the Tax Cut & Jobs Act (Trump Tax Cut), during his first term, Trump supported capping the deductibility of SALT at $10,000 annually. At the time, it was viewed as a … Continue reading Flip Flop On SALT Deduction
With tomorrow being Election Day, what’s your likely exposure to a new administration in Washington DC in January? I know we all have our favorites and we are often breathlessly told that “it is the most important election of our lifetimes!” Still, I’m struggling to think how my wife & I will be directly impacted by any of the changes that have been discussed. Please … Continue reading Election Impacts?
The news has been full of economic policy proposals from our two major candidates. I’ll tell you that I’ve been reading them with interest, but cannot make sense out of either of them. They are both promising big economic windfalls to their favored protected classes and paying very little attention to the country’s current $35T debt (123% of GDP, up from just 56% in 2000). … Continue reading Confusing Candidates
It was only a couple days after the horrific assassination attempt on former President Trump, when the texts started coming. No tragedy, however dreadful, is missed by the political campaigns in their quest to raise money. It’s not the first text like this that I’ve gotten this year. I didn’t sign up for anything from Trump or Biden. I certainly wasn’t looking for Trump’s “love”. … Continue reading Political Campaign Exemption
Well, I gave Biden some credit back in December for the nice bump that we had seen in the stock market in 2021. I felt obligated to, given how well the market had performed … +27% last year. Still, I noted then that I was worried that Biden wanted to be too helpful and that significant inflation was a real worry. He literally said “help … Continue reading Politicians Too Eager To ‘Help’
The old saying goes “put your money where your mouth is” and I have a friend who has been betting his political analysis/opinions on the interesting website ‘PredictIt’ this week. As you can imagine, he’s had a wild week! While I made a few friendly wagers (a bottle of wine or 6-pack of beer) with some buddies on the outcome, my friend put major $$$ … Continue reading Betting The Presidency
With the Presidential election this week, I thought I would do a quick portfolio check to see where our retirement portfolio is sitting before the markets react. It seems a big enough change-point, that I would keep track of where we are at – at this moment in time. The good news is that despite the pandemic sell-off in March, we’ve weathered the 2020 storm(s) … Continue reading Election 2020 – Where Are We At?
At the end of the year, the media is full of retrospectives on the top news events and celebrity stories, so with that in mind, I set my thoughts to what are the biggest news happenings that have affected people on their journey to financial independence and retiring early (FIRE) in 2017. Here’s my list (in no particular order) … TRUMP BUMP – The stock … Continue reading Top 7 FIRE News Stories of 2017
MrFireStation 