Leaked information tells the story of prominent world leaders who avoided taxes or looted their country’s treasuries in order to squirrel away not only money, but expensive yachts, luxury homes, ownership of a candy company and investments in construction companies. The Prime Minister of Iceland has already resigned as a result of the leaked client […]
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‘Market Commentary’ Category
Chances are, you’re underestimating the amount of progress we’re going to make in technology, medicine and a host of other things. Why? Because your brain, and mine, and everyone else’s, thinks linearly, rather than exponentially. We are living in an age of exponential change in things like computing power and speed, decoding and finding medical […]
We’re in one of the longest-running, biggest wealth-producing bull markets in history, but you wouldn’t know it from the headlines or the gloomy mood of investors. On March 9, the bull market in U.S. stocks, represented by the S&P 500, celebrated its seventh year. The index has risen 194% since closing at 676.53 on March […]
Most people have seen bogus emails purported to be from the executors of the estate of Nigerian princes or other obscure foreign notables who want to give them millions of dollars, and sometimes they get bogus calls telling them they can win a lottery sweepstakes or receive debt relief. But apparently one of the most […]
In recent years, a new category of assets has appeared on the scene, which can be more complicated to pass on at someone’s death than stocks, bonds and cash. The list includes such valuable property as digital domain names, social media accounts, websites and blogs that you manage, and pretty much anything stored on the […]
Years ago, the way to most efficiently save on estate taxes was to set up credit shelter trusts that would pour assets from one spouse to another when death occurred, so that both spouses would get the maximum estate tax exemption. In those simpler days, people who didn’t have to pay estate taxes didn’t have […]
Chances are, you know that it takes steady savings to accumulate wealth. A recent article in Business Insider actually calculated how much you’d have to invest each day in order to become a millionaire. Suppose your investments earn an average 7% yearly return, and you want to have $1 million by the age of 65. […]
Any seasoned investor will tell you that buying one stock is riskier than buying a basket of stocks. The underlying concept is diversification—the idea that the movement of the shares of many different companies, taken together, will be smoother than the trajectory of any one of them. But the ETF market has managed to create […]
Yesterday, the U.S. stock markets went up 2.39%, the highest one-day return in a month. Analysts attributed the rise to a variety of economic news that suggested that the American economy is not, after all, plunging into recession. The buoyant mood among investors may not last, but for many, it’s a welcome sign that things […]
Financial resolutions often fall prey to the same procrastination that hinders personal aspirations. Yet current volatility in the financial markets along with other unsettling factors such as the impending presidential election and widespread geopolitical unrest may have led investors to pause, rethink their financial situations, and set new expectations for the future. Resolutions typically fall […]