Once again Bitcoin is in the news. This time the hype is around a new exchange-traded fund (ETF) just introduced by ProShares. The headline news purports it to be a safer way to invest in Bitcoins by avoiding unregulated exchanges and loss-prone Bitcoin wallets. While the ETF structure does add a modicum of legitimacy around…
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The recession that began in February 2020 as a result of the COVID pandemic officially ended in April 2020 according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private nonpartisan economic research organization. (From the vantage point of 2021 this should come as no surprise). That makes the two-month COVID recession the shortest in…
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It may seem that the U.S. stock market has been the place to invest your savings over the last few years. The S&P 500 returned 32% in 2019, 18% in 2020, and is currently up almost 20% so far this year. That’s well above its 50-year average annual return of slightly over 10%. During periods…
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A young tech employee recently wrote an article in New York Magazine about her experience becoming a multi-millionaire after her company went public (see https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/04/confessions-overnight-tech-millionaire.html.) Not surprisingly it involved equal measures of anxiety and jubilation as she movingly described how both large and small aspects of her life have uncontrollably changed. Psychologist & author Stephen…
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If company earnings were the most important factor associated with company stock returns, shouldn’t the S&P 500 average annual index performance have reflected the average annual earnings growth of the companies that it comprises? According to Ben Carlson of Ritholtz Wealth Management, over the past 80 years corporate earnings have increased by about 6% annually…
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The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase went public earlier this month. But rather than following the standard initial public offering (IPO) process, the company chose to do a direct public offering (DPO), also known as a direct listing. What’s the benefit to the company, and, more importantly, what’s the benefit (if any) to investors? In a standard…
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