Mid-Year Index vs. Active Update

Twice a year, S&P Dow Jones updates their SPIVA (S&P Indices Versus Active) report.

More

Inflation vs. Stocks and Bonds

Today’s Chart of the Day comes from S&P Dow Jones Indices.

More

45% to 59% Overvalue of Real Estate?

Today’s chart comes from Fortune, which shows the real estate markets that are “overvalued” based on the area's local incomes and construction costs.

More

With Bonds All Things Are Equal

Today's Chart of the Day comes from an article in AAII.com (American Association of Individual Investors) and shows the average cumulative global corporate default rate from 1981-2021 in seven year spans.

A common misconception is that the yield you see from a bond portfolio is what you can expect to earn. However, this is a best case scenario as some of the bonds will ultimately default, causing a loss that reduces the yield.

In rough figures, if you take the weighted average default rate of all speculative/junk bonds and assume a 50% loss of principal of those bonds, over seven years this can reduce your total return by 2.9% annually.

The current yield to maturity on speculative/junk bonds is 7.6%. When you add in the historical loss of 2.9%, this reduces the total return to 4.7%, which happens to be the same yield of 4.7% in an investment grade bond with a similar maturity.

More

Percentages On-Time

The Chart of the Day comes from Bloomberg. It's not a necessarily a financial chart, but instead shows percentages of on-time flights, and the amount of passengers traveled per airline.

More

Requirements to Qualify for an SBA 504 Loan

Small Business Administration (SBA) 504 loans offer affordable financing to small businesses for financing large equipment or real estate purchases. Because of their low interest rates and long loan terms, this type of small business loan is an ideal option for owners who need to make large purchases. 

More

Moving the Goalposts

Today's chart appears in a research paper titled, “Moving the Goalposts? Mutual Fund Benchmark Changes and Performance Manipulation” which was referenced in an article from the Wall Street Journal the week of August 22. The paper denotes that 37% of all actively managed mutual fund managers changed their benchmarks between 2006 and 2018, and two-thirds of these changes made the funds appear to improve their performance.

More

Life Expectancy: 77 Years (Depending)

Today's Chart of the Day comes from an article in the Wall Street Journal which shows the life expectancy at birth based on which state you live in. The lowest was Mississippi at 71.9 years, and the highest was Hawaii at 80.7 years. It's nice to see that Florida was on the higher end at 77.5 years.

More

Housing Slump

Today’s chart comes from data provided by the Department of Housing and Development (HUD) which shows that the rate of new US home sales per month has fallen 50% from 1,000,000 to 500,00 since the peak in August 2020.

More

7 Investment Concepts

Top 7 Investment Concepts by Samuel A. Kiburz:

More

Investing 101: Risk and the Possibility of Loss

In the financial planning world, the concept of risk is often used in conversation. Risk has multiple meanings, but the first definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is quite simply the “possibility of loss.”

More

Recession? That’s a word my parents use.

We’ve all seen them. They scream at us. We’re just minding our own business admiring cute cat videos as we scroll and they ruin it. Those fearmongering, anxiety-spiking headlines that desperately want you to click them, because, even though we’ve been here before, YOU haven’t been here before. And they know it.

Recession. It evokes plenty of negative emotions and fears on its own, but couple that with cleverly titled click-bait articles and they have you right where they want you – feeling dependent on whatever they’re selling so you don’t fall into financial ruin. Here’s a little PSA: The only one who can help you not only survive but thrive in a recession is YOU.

More

Seven Steps to Manage Your Retirement

You made it to retirement! Now what?

How do you plan to pay all the expenses you’ll have for the rest of your life? This can be a daunting task. Many retirees simply open their monthly statements, check the balance, and hope that it’s enough. Hope is not a plan. Those with a plan will have better options and more choices regardless of what happens in the next twenty or thirty years. The outcome will be impacted by many known and unknown variables between the beginning and end. An effective retirement plan will require some time, effort, optimism, and a realistic view of the future. Most importantly, you’ll need to stick to the plan to make it effective and be prepared to adjust along the way. So, where to begin?

More

The Shying Away from ESG

Today's chart is from Bloomberg Intelligence, which shows the money flows into ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) ETFs since they appeared in 2015.

More

No More Heydays for Hedge Funds

People may ask, “Why not use hedge funds?” Today's chart comes from Bloomberg and shows us the reason why.  In addition to their typical expense ratio of 2% and 20% of gains above a benchmark, hedge funds have consistently underperformed the stock market, denoted by the S&P 500 index, every year since 2014. In fact, they haven’t performed well since their heydays in the 1980s, and even less so since 2007.

More