Have you ever looked at your brokerage or IRA account statement and discovered that the unrealized gain from one of the investments you thought was doing well is negative? Does that mean you’ve been losing money on that particular investment? Not necessarily. Here is a brief explanation of why we don’t use unrealized gains to…
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As of this writing the S&P 500 is currently down almost 6% since the start of the year, one of the worst January performances in a long time. Does this indicate 2022 is likely to be a terrible year for the stock market? Let’s start with a basic tenet: nobody can predict the future. There…
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The year 2021 is coming to an end and the stock market is experiencing a level of volatility not seen for some time. The stock prices of previously high-flying companies such as Facebook are down from their previous highs. Could this be the beginning of a major downturn? One indicator that many technical stock analysts…
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The technology sector of the U.S. stock market has been on a tear. During the last decade the T. Rowe Price Science & Technology mutual fund (which I will use as a proxy to represent the sector) rose over 300% (see chart below). Younger investors who started buying stocks or mutual funds less than ten…
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The S&P 500 just set a new high last week as of this writing. It’s up over 26% so far this year. And that’s on top of a 16% rise in 2020 and a nearly 29% jump in 2019. It’s completely understandable that investors would question whether they should remain in the stock market, let…
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