Insights

A lot of people are stressed out about a lot of things right now. Markets are down. Prices are up for many of the things you need to buy. Interest rates are rising and make it a confusing time to consider buying or selling a house, or making other major financial decisions. This all adds to the stress you may be feeling about your job, the ongoing pandemic, and the health of loved ones. If you’re stressed out about what
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If markets are good at one thing, it’s reminding investors that stock prices don’t simply go up, uninterrupted, forever. I have updated this report several times since it was initially published in 2008; it’s undoubtedly obvious why I’m doing so again. I do not have a crystal ball and they don’t ring a bell at market tops or bottoms. It’s not what we know, or you know, about the future (path of the stock market) that matters. It’s what we
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KEY TAKEAWAYS Many investors inform their sentiment about markets by looking for cycles in returns. Rolling returns give a false sense of cyclicality because of overlap among consecutive periods. Investors should avoid basing market expectations on this illusion of predictability. Investors can be both motivated and well-equipped to see patterns in stock returns. Motivated, because successfully predicting market movements can be lucrative, and well-equipped, because evolution has programmed humans to err on the side of seeing patterns even when they’re
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Rising inflation, interest rate movements, ongoing trade wars, COVID-19 variants, bear market predictions, the Russian attack on Ukraine and heightened geopolitical uncertainty, …that’s a lot to think about. The first quarter of 2022 reminds us all how much uncertainty can fill the world at any given moment— and how little control we have over it all. This perceived lack of control can lead to feelings of anxiety and stress in our everyday lives. One of the best coping techniques is
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The S&P 500 ® Index recently completed its worst 100 day run to start a year since 1970 one of many signs of a volatile market that has stressed investors. A strong gain for the index over the week ending May 27 created some breathing room from bear market territory, but investor anxiety likely remains. With continued concerns related to inflation’s impact on consumer spending and company earnings, potential effects from the Federal Reserve’s (Fed’s) rate hikes, and the oft
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