Good News - Nothing Bad Happened
by Guy Baker
Over the last month, little has happened to make one optimistic, but the good news is there has not been any new or unexpected bad news. A missile test here and a bomb detonation there aside, the month was relatively calm.
All that may have contributed to another impressive week for the stock market. But lest we be fooled, there are plenty of storms ahead.
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Did investment diversification fail during the 2008 bear market?
Investment pundits have been harping on a popular theme lately: the great market sell-off of 2008, they say, proves that diversification “doesn’t work.”
How’s that again? The pundits say virtually every investment market fell during the year, including parts of the bond market. Worldwide stock markets fell pretty much in concert, with little difference between big stocks in the United States and tiny stocks in Malaysia.
Peng Chen, president of the investment analyst firm Ibbotson Associates, disagrees. . . -READ MORE-
Recovering from a market rout doesn’t have to take decades
The U.S. stock market dropped 57 percent from its peak in late 2007 through March 9 of this year, making this the second worst bear market since the Great Depression.
Investors, quite naturally, want to know how long a recovery will take. We are constantly reminded of an ominous precedent: the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a high in 1929, plunged, and then took 25 years to recover. Will today’s market behave in similar fashion? . . . -READ MORE-
Social Security is still vital to retirees
Some younger workers discount the relative importance of Social Security in their retirement planning, yet it remains a major source of income for most retirees.
Social Security benefits currently represent about 40 percent of all income received by the elderly, says the Social Security Administration. . . -READ More-
Address issues you can control when doing estate planning
The future of federal estate taxes remains up in the air. No one is certain whether the Obama administration will offer a new taxation plan when current regulations expire after 2010.
In the meantime, anyone doing their own estate planning should focus on the important issues that are in their control.
Love and money, young insure, & more
When it comes to love, money can be a relationship killer.
A survey by PayPal found that 43 percent of couples in the United States said the stress of the recession
had caused them to argue more, mainly about finances.
The online payment service said money is the number one source of couples’ arguments, with sex finishing as a distant second. Its international survey found that. . .-READ MORE-