Is The Stock Market Overly Concentrated Today?

Is The Stock Market Overly Concentrated Today?

If you owned Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google at the beginning of this year you would be holding the four most valuable stocks in the entire U.S. stock market based on market capitalization (the stock’s price times the number of shares outstanding). Facebook clocked in at number six. Out of some 3,500 companies comprising the…
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Can Investment Performance Data Lie?

Mark Twain popularized the phrase “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” There is some validity to that statement when it comes to investing. All data reported in the financial media and promoted by investment salespeople is of necessity historical in nature. After all, if you’re trying to recommend an investment, the only data that…
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The Difficulty With Investing in Commodities

In addition to investing in stocks and bonds, there are also ways you can invest in commodities. These are raw materials that are either consumed directly or more commonly used by manufacturers to create other products. Examples include metals such as gold, silver, aluminum, and copper; energy raw materials such as oil and natural gas;…
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What Investment Mistake Did 30% of Seniors Make This Year?

According to data from Fidelity Investments, over 30% of investors aged 65 and above sold all their equity holdings this year. By comparison, less than 20% of all investors made the same mistake. Although the data doesn’t pinpoint exactly when most of the transactions occurred, it’s likely it was sometime when the market was at…
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Why Is The Stock Market So Disconnected From The Economy?

Does it seem to you that the stock market is totally disconnected from the reality of the economy? Business news has been as bad as it gets. The number of unemployed workers has reached record-setting levels while GDP has declined to levels not seen since the 1930s. Federal debt has increased by over $3 trillion.…
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Why Volatility Makes Investing So Difficult

Whenever stock prices take a hit, volatility generally increases. By that I mean daily price swings become more extreme – both in size as well as in speed – as compared to longer-term averages. That’s the situation in which we found ourselves after COVID-19 decimated world economies. When was the last time you saw the…
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