historical
The 15 Least-Visited National Parks in the Lower 48
Take a look at the least-visited National Parks in the lower 48 and plan your next getaway today.
The post The 15 Least-Visited National Parks in the Lower 48 appeared first on The Rent.com Blog : A Renterâs Guide for Tips & Advice.
How To Make More Money- 100+ Great Ideas
Want to learn how to make more money? Learning how to earn more money is more popular than ever. Whether you need to make extra money so you can stop living paycheck to paycheck, if you’re looking to bulk up your savings, build a side business, or something else, there are many reasons for wanting […]
The post How To Make More Money- 100+ Great Ideas appeared first on Making Sense Of Cents.
Moving to Orlando: What All Renters Need to Know
Learn all about Orlando. After all, it’s called the City Beautiful for a reason.
The post Moving to Orlando: What All Renters Need to Know appeared first on The Rent.com Blog : A Renterâs Guide for Tips & Advice.
Bond Advice for Today’s Market: Think Big Picture
There is an old joke that some statisticians tell, that âa person with their head in an oven and their feet in the freezer is comfortable â on average.â Statisticians are not known for their sense of humor (clearly), but the joke is an effective warning about some of the shortcomings of relying on averages.
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Statistically, a simple average camouflages extremes within its sample data. And, while the statisticianâs joke is somewhat extreme, it is no less extreme than the actual returns in the long-run average annual returns for stocks and bonds that set many investorsâ return expectations.
Whatâs an ‘average’ annual return anyway?
If quizzed, it is likely that many investors would estimate the average annualized returns for U.S. stocks and bonds to be about 10% and 5%, respectively. Those averages are composed of decades of returns and describe history perfectly. However, although they describe the average annualized returns, they are a far cry from the typical or “average” experience. Â In fact, in only two years from 1926 through 2020 did both the stock and bond market deliver returns within 2% (+/-) of their historical averages (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Annual stock and bond returns, 1926-2020
Source: Liberty Wealth Advisors, using data from Morningstar Direct
In 2021, U.S. stocks  gained 25.7%, while U.S. bonds lost 1.5%.* While it is fair to say that it was a great year for stocks, is it fair to say that it was a bad year for bonds because they didnât return their 5.7%* average?  Probably not. The only thing rarer than a year with âaverageâ returns might be a year that investors appreciate their bond allocations amid a bull market for stocks.
For those of you thinking about abandoning bonds, here are some ideas that may help:
A bad day for stocks is often much worse than a bad year for bonds.
While investors prefer gains to losses, they also prefer small losses to big losses. While far from being predictive, Figure 1 demonstrates that negative returns in bonds have tended to be both infrequent and modest. In fact, the bond marketâs worst annual return was a loss of 5.1% in 1994. However, the stocks of the S&P 500 index have posted daily losses that bad or worse 25 times since 1926.
Sometimes, the further the distance, the clearer the picture.
Often, itâs hard for investors to see the benefits that high-quality bonds can add to their portfolios, especially when the returns they are posting are modest â or even modestly negative. And today, concerns for higher interest rates due to higher-than-expected inflation are making it even more challenging for investors to ignore some punditsâ suggestions that holding bonds is a bad idea.
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I was given a magnifying glass when I was young, and I started looking at everything through it. Eventually, I looked at the Sunday comics and realized that for all I saw, I wasnât seeing everything. The cartoons were nothing but a variety of colored dots! Magazine photos, too. It made me wonder how much else I was missing because I wasnât looking closely enough. Now, I realize that when I was close enough to see the dots, I missed the bigger picture â literally.
Similarly, the dots in Figure 1 paint a picture thatâs easy to overlook when youâre too narrowly focused: The principal benefit of investment-grade bonds isnât their frequency of positive returns but the infrequency of large, negative returns. And, yes, if the returns in Figure 1 were inflation-adjusted, the frequency of negative returns for both bonds and stocks would increase. However, that would not change what Figure 1 tells us: High-quality bonds in a portfolio can help moderate the volatility of stocks.
The bottom line: Keep your eye on the big picture.
A well-diversified portfolio can benefit from bonds: More likely than not, a bad year for bonds will be much better than a bad day for stocks. While that certainly wonât insure your portfolio against losses, it can certainly help moderate the losses when the markets turn intemperate.
Having a well-diversified portfolio that includes an allocation to high-quality bonds can help keep a bad day in the stock market from turning into a bad year for your portfolio.
* Stock performance as measured by the CRSP U.S. Total Market Index. Bond performance as measured by the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Float Adjusted Index. Bond average is a geometric mean return for the Ibbotson® SBBI® U.S. Intermediate-term (5-Year) Government Bonds (Total return).
- SEE MORE 4 Tips on How to Build a Better Bond Position
What Are Metaverse Stocks and Should You Invest in Them?
Stock Market Today: Stocks, Oil Slump in Seesaw Session
The major indexes lurched between positive and negative territory as investors flailed about on a relatively slow-news Thursday.
Russia’s attacks on numerous Ukrainian regions continued even as negotiators sat for a second round of peace talks; the two sides agreed that it was necessary to establish “humanitarian corridors” for Ukraineâs civilians. No cease-fire was reached, but both parties agreed to meet for a third round of discussions.
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Also Thursday, the Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims for the week ended Feb. 26 declined to 215,000, 10,000 below expectations. And the Institute for Supply Management showed that service activity continued to expand again in February, though the pace has slowed for the fourth consecutive month.
“February’s 56.5 headline reading came in well below expectations, which generally anticipated that service sector activity would reaccelerate with fading omicron infection risks. The opposite appears to have occurred,” say Barclays economists. “Although February’s reading still points to moderate growth, it is the lowest in 12 months.”
The Nasdaq Composite (-1.6% to 13,537) led the major indexes lower on a back-and-forth day, while the S&P 500 (-0.5% to 4,363) and Dow Jones Industrial Average (-0.3% to 33,794) closed with more modest declines.
Commodities, most notably oil, also saw their share of swings. U.S. crude oil futures jumped above $116 per barrel intraday for the first time since early 2011 before pulling back to $107.67 per barrel (a 2.7% drop).
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“The volatility in commodities markets continues to be astounding,” says Michael Reinking, senior market strategist for the New York Stock Exchange. “Given Russia’s importance in the commodities complex, we’ve seen metals, agriculture and energy-related commodities all moving higher. This week alone wheat and oil futures are up greater than 20%.”
- SEE MORE The 22 Best ETFs to Buy for a Prosperous 2022
Barclays points out that business activity, new orders and employment all fell “to levels not seen since 2020.”
YCharts
Other news in the stock market today:
- The small-cap Russell 2000Â also headed lower, off 1.3% to 2,032.
- Gold futures closed 0.7% higher to $1,935.90 per ounce.
- Bitcoin sharply tailed off, shedding 4.6% to $41,811.00. (Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day; prices reported here are as of 4 p.m.)
- Best Buy (BBY, +9.2%) reported in-line fiscal fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of $2.73 per share, while revenue of $16.4 billion fell short of the $16.6 billion analysts were expecting. The big-box retailer also said same-store sales declined by a wider-than-anticipated 2.3% for the three-month period, and gave lower-than-expected top- and bottom-line guidance for the full fiscal year. However, the company did boost its quarterly dividend by 26% and said it will spend $1.5 billion on share buybacks over the next year. After the results, CFRA Research analyst Kenneth Leon downgraded BBY stock to Sell from Hold. In the upcoming fiscal year, the analyst expects revenue growth to decline, whiel higher wages and inventory costs will pressure margins.
- Snowflake (SNOW) spiraled 15.4% after earnings. In its fourth quarter, the data-analytics cloud company said revenue doubled from the year prior to $383.8 million, while its adjusted per-share loss narrowed to 43 cents. It also reported lower-than-anticipated gross margin of 70% and slowing current-quarter revenue growth. Still, Oppenheimer analyst Ittai Kidron maintained an Outperform (Buy) rating on SNOW. “While management’s initiatives to optimize price/performance in hardware/software are a near-term headwind to consumption and revenue, they can drive incremental workloads to Snowflake’s platform,” Kidron says. “We see a long trajectory of rapid revenue increases fueled by an IT shift to a cloud-centric model, digital transformation, and higher spend on machine learning/data science.”
- While SNOW sold off after earnings, Kroger (KR) â another member of the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio â surged 11.6% in the wake of its results. The grocery chain reported adjusted earnings of 91 cents per share in its fourth quarter on revenue of $33.1 billion. This was higher than the 74 cents per share and $32.9 billion analysts were expecting. Nevertheless, CFRA Research analyst Arun Sundaram maintained a Sell rating on KR stock. “We think wage pressures will persist longer than the net positive impact of higher food prices, noting KR typically has several labor agreements up for renewal each year,” the analyst writes in a note. “There is also risk that we could see strikes like King Soopers. Competition and less stimulus, government aid and vaccine benefits will also be headwinds in 2022. Overall, we view the risk/reward as unfavorable with the shares now trading at 14x our fiscal 2023 earnings-per share-estimate vs. 12x historical average.”
Billionaires Have Been Unloading These 15 Stocks
Our exploration of institutional investors’ recent trades continues today ⦠with a bearish tilt.
- SEE MORE 5 Stocks to Sell for 2022
Individual investors can find something both educational and entertaining in exploring what the “smart money” is up to, made available on the regular thanks to required quarterly Form 13F filings.
Of late, we’ve looked into what Warren Buffett has been buying and selling in his Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio, as well as the most popular blue chips among Wall Street’s hedge fund managers. And tomorrow, we’ll take one last look at buying activity, this time among bona fide billionaires.
But first, we’re going to see what those billionaires have been selling.
Checking out what high-net-worth investors have been cutting loose can be every bit as informative as their buys â sure, sometimes a sell might just be taking prudent profits on a successful trade, but other times it can signal that an equity’s story has changed or that headwinds are on the horizon. So read on as we zoom in on 15 stocks getting the cold shoulder by at least one billionaire investor:
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The Housing Affordability Crisis and Proposed Changes That Can Help
With over 15 million millennials experiencing monumental student loan debt, the combination of that and rising home prices has created a housing affordability crisis. Here are some proposed changes to help ease the rising problem.
The post The Housing Affordability Crisis and Proposed Changes That Can Help appeared first on Homes.com.
Denver Housing Market Update December 2021
The Denver market felt the December slow this year with homes closed, new listings and inventory all down. Check out below to see how the Denver area housing market performed in December: Data from ReColorado from December 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021. Monthly Sales The monthly sales numbers in the Denver area decreased, landing… Read more »
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Understanding Market Sentiment
Thereâs a common misconception about what moves stock prices. Flip on the cable news and the vibe might have you believe that political statements, economic data points, natural disasters, or global unrest have some sort of predictable or unilateral effect on the stock market. And they might! But in a slightly more roundabout way. These […]
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