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The only investment "given" that I know for certain is that markets go up and down. I suspect that anyone out there can argue with that. Whether you look at it from a short-term day by day perspective or a long-term 50 year time horizon the market has been proven time and time again to do just that. Most likely the stock market is going to continue doing this in the future. So what does that mean considering we are in what many are calling a very historic stock market correction based on …

Continue Reading about Market Returns 5 Years After Historical Market Declines

Remember when all we could do with an iPod was listen to music. That was so 2002. I was using the current iteration of the iPod - the iTouch - reading the latest news while enjoying some Metallica and thought it might be a good idea to do a post on the applications (and specific web sites) I use on the device. I know there are many more out there; I am constantly finding new ones and dropping old ones. Here is a selection of the current finance related applications that I have …

Continue Reading about Finance Applications I Use on My iTouch (or iPhone)

Can I let you all in on a little stock market secret? This is very privileged information so please cover your screen while you read this so that others will not see our little secret. Ok, ready - here it comes...........The stock market is volatile and can go up and down a lot!![ad#tdg-embedded] Seriously though, the stock market does only two things on any given day. It either goes up, or it goes down. Our job as investors is to determine how to deal with it and not make stupid …

Continue Reading about 8 Ways to Deal with Volatile Markets

The wonderful magic of compounding returns that is reflected in the long-term productivity of American business, then, is translated into equally wonderful returns in the stock market. But those returns are overwhelmed by the powerful tyranny of compounding the costs of investing. - Bogle (The Little Book of Common Sense Investing) There is such an intense focus on what returns an investor earns that often one the most important aspects (other than asset allocation) of investing is ignored …

Continue Reading about The Tyranny of Investment Fees

Although I used to provide my full portfolio on this blog, values and all, I stopped doing it for two simple reasons: privacy and the illusion of a recommendation. First, it felt weird to publish my portfolio value and net worth to the world (not that the world reads this blog!) Second, I got the feeling that by publishing my portfolio a small number of people were considering it as a buy recommendation and were in fact copying it. That was wrong! Although I believe strongly in my investing …

Continue Reading about My Portfolio and Asset Allocation

October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February. ~Mark Twain I love this quote because it really sums up the risks of speculating in the stock market. At the end of the day, I don't think there is any way to accurately predict what the stock market is going to return over the next X number of years.[ad#tdg-embedded] However, the investment industry …

Continue Reading about Future Stock Market Returns