Retirement Watch Weekly
A Summary of Stock Market Warning Signs
Investors were lulled into a complacent state by the effects of the massive monetary injection by global central banks in late 2011. The new money turned around major global economies and boosted asset prices, especially equities and real estate. But that’s the past. The monetary expansion programs are winding down, and the global economy is […]
What Medicare is Worth to You
Most people don’t know much about Medicare, even current beneficiaries. People planning for retirement don’t know much either, as surveys consistently show. As this article says, they’re clueless. A few points it makes are that we aren’t paying into a trust fund that funds our benefits during retirement. In fact, most of the benefits paid […]
Retiring Like a Pro Athlete
News media often have stories about pro athletes who made a lot of money but became bankrupt. Here’s a piece with a more positive take. It interviewed a collection of retired pro athletes who did smart things with their money and are having successful retirements. The article isn’t just for athletes and prospective athletes. You can […]
You’ll Need Social Security
People make a lot mistakes in financial and retirement planning. One I see regularly is pre-retirees, of almost every age, say they won’t need or rely on Social Security. Many say they assume they won’t get anything from it. Routinely surveys of pre-retirees indicate that 30% or fewer expect SS to be a “major source […]
The High Dividend Fallacy
For the last few years a number of analysts urged income-seeking investors to buy high-yielding stocks instead of different types of bonds. I haven’t done that, because there’s a risk-return trade off that’s ignored in this advice. The trade off became obvious last Friday when JPMorgan announced a large hedging loss and its stock declined […]
Today’s Best Investment – Gold?
A plurality of Americans believe gold is today’s safest investment, and by a surprisingly wide margin, according to a Gallup poll. This is the second consecutive year the poll had this result, though the number in favor of gold declined from 34% to 28%. The poll leaves a lot of questions unanswered. How do Americans […]
A Margin of Safety Primer
I almost always recommend a reading of the quarterly shareholder letter from Martin Whitman of Third Avenue funds. The first quarter of 2012 is no exception. In fact, it’s a special letter because Whitman recently stepped down as manager of the Third Avenue Value fund. The latest letter is a primer on Whitman’s version of […]
May 2012
May 25, 2012 04:45 p.m. Your Retirement Finance Week in Review These weekly messages don’t often draw attention to a lot of economic data from outside the U.S. But this week was a major one for global economic data. The first conclusion from the data is that Europe continues to deteriorate. We already knew that […]
