The Consequences Of Investing At The Worst Time

The Consequences Of Investing At The Worst Time

I previously wrote about the impossibility of successfully beating the S&P 500 through market timing. But many people are still afraid to invest in stocks, especially when the market is setting new highs, for fear of buying just before a major market drop. If you can’t time the markets, what can you do to avoid…
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Why Doesn’t Market Timing Work?

Of all the schemes investors have come up with to try to avoid losses and/or to beat the market, market timing is probably one of the most seductive. It seems obvious that when something significant occurs in the U.S. economy or elsewhere in the world, you’d expect the market to react accordingly. Wouldn’t that be…
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Why Does The Media Prefer The Dow?

Tune in to any news channel on TV or pick up any newspaper and the one U.S. stock market benchmark that you will inevitably find reported is the Dow. Yet the Dow – more formally called the Dow-Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) – is not especially representative of the broad stock market. Or for that matter…
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Are Small Cap Stocks Ready To Outperform?

The stock market has been very generous to investors since the recession of 2008. Over the past 15 years the S&P 500 large cap index rose 13.9% on average each year (source: Morningstar). The same, however, cannot be said for smaller company stocks. The Russell 2000, a popular small cap stock index, grew only 10.4%…
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Are Investment Books & Newsletters Worth It?

A long time ago before the inception of email and the Internet, some investment advisors made a living selling investment books and/or newsletters. There are still plenty of investment authors and books around today, but the newsletters have given way to investment emails, web sites, podcasts, and TV pundits hawking everything from stocks and cryptocurrencies…
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Worried About The Election’s Impact On The Stock Market?

I have heard from several clients about how worried they are regarding the upcoming presidential election. I won’t delve into the politics; you can draw your own conclusions as to the consequences of one or the other candidate’s getting into or remaining in power. But as far as the stock market is concerned, I don’t…
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