A shocking study was recently released by the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, “The Financial Capability of Young Adults – A Generational View,” which showed a serious lack of financial knowledge and problematic financial behavior. Only 24 percent of millennials were able to answer four or five questions on a five-question financial literacy quiz correctly. And […]
As the U.S. stock market ( as measured by the S&P 500) continues on its almost daily march to new highs, investors need to remember that nothing goes up in a straight line forever, and they should start thinking about investing in markets that may provide more value. It’s also important to note that earnings […]
As the noose tightens for American citizens living abroad trying to invest, the latest causality appears to be mutual funds. Many American olim now living in Israel are no longer able to purchase many mutual funds because of their foreign domicile. Many big name mutual fund families have set up a blanket rule that if […]
In a recent column I wrote for Marketwatch.com, I was lambasted for questioning the wisdom of using dividend stocks as a replacement for bonds. It didn’t help that the headline writer changed my original title to “Time to dump high-dividend stocks?” Nothing like a little shock value to get a lot more article views. In […]
Open up a book on Investing 101 and it will tell you that a stock’s return will be directly related to its risk. The Investing 101 book states that if you want to have high returns, you have to take on enough risk so that if you are wrong, it will end up costing you […]
Israel is on fire and I am not talking about the weather. Open a newspaper and you will see that another Israeli company has been purchased or has gone public. While much of the developed world is mired in economic quicksand, desperately trying to escape the global recession, but with anemic growth, Israel keeps chugging […]
The easiest way to teach children the value of money is to borrow some from them. With Passover fast approaching, the focus is starting to move from cleaning to the Seder night. There we have a command to teach our children about the Jewish nation’s exodus from slavery in Egypt. Passover is all about passing […]
“Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.” -Phyllis Diller With a home full of little kids we haven’t started Passover cleaning yet, but from what I see and hear from most other people – Passover cleaning is in full swing. While many are […]
President Barack Obama wants to eliminate, as part of his proposed fiscal year 2015 budget, aggressive Social Security claiming strategies “which allow upper-income beneficiaries to manipulate the timing of collection of Social Security benefits to maximize delayed retirement credits.”
“It’s hard to define, but, you know, it probably means something on the order of around six months or that type of thing.” – Fed Chair Janet Yellen That comment by the new chairwomen of the Federal Reserve sent shock waves through global financial markets. Janet Yellen was answering a question about when she estimated […]
