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Retirement Investing

Bob Carlson offers his expert opinion on where to invest your money so that you can get through retirement safely and securely

Found 897 Articles.
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The Dog That Didn’t Bark

February 22, 2018

What was a unique feature of the recent stock market sell- off? Give yourself a prize if you said the limited action in the bond market, especially high-yield and corporate bonds. High-yield bonds are correlated more with equities than with government bonds, so when stocks have a correction, there’s usually a jump in high-yield bond […]

Stock Market Bubbles – The Tulip Mania Revised

February 21, 2018

Most people who’ve done any reading on investing have come across the Dutch Tulip Bulb Mania of the 1630s. It often is considered to be the first financial bubble and the classic example of manias, financial delusions, and other mental mistakes. This article says that everything we’ve been told about the tulip mania is wrong. […]

The Two Questions You Need to Ask

February 20, 2018

Investors were avoiding two key questions, but now they’re paying attention. It was easy to overlook these questions for more than a year, because we were in the sweet spot of the business and market cycles. Yet, that’s the time when it’s most important to probe these questions, and we’ve been doing that. Since mid-2016, […]

Minimizing Taxes on Sales of Mutual Funds, Stocks

February 20, 2018

The House of Representatives’ version of the 2017 tax reform caused a panic among many tax and financial advisors, because it would have effectively increased capital gains taxes on many investors, especially retired investors. Fortunately, the change didn’t make it into the final law. Savvy investors retain some control over the amount of taxes they […]

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True Investment Diversification in Detail

February 20, 2018

I’ve said many times that people believe they have diversified portfolios when they really don’t. Here’s a good explanation of what true diversification is and its benefits. It explains how diversification can result in higher long-term returns and also less risk in the portfolio, with risk being measured as the variability of returns. When we […]

Trouble in Corporate Bonds

February 16, 2018

When interest rates rise, government bonds are the first investments to suffer. Since they’re considered to have little or no credit risk, their prices adjust quickly to changes in rates. Corporate bonds, both investment-grade and high-yield, make small adjustments to interest rates. But investors in them are more focused on credit quality and liquidity. That’s […]

It Looks Like a Typical Correction

February 15, 2018

The recent correction shook up investors, and that will be good for the markets in the coming months. Before the correction, stock indexes had been on an extended upward climb. The climb became very steep in January. Importantly, technical measures indicated stocks not only were overbought, but extremely overbought. That means the index was more […]

Finally, a Significant Market Decline

February 7, 2018

I didn’t mean to put a hex on the stock markets last week. In last Thursday’s Bob’s Journal, I wondered how investors would react to the next big decline in stocks. I pointed out that a decline of more than 500 points on the Dow would be only a 2% decline. However, such a decline […]

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