The key economic question for 2024 is how to think about the interest rate cuts we’re likely to get from the Federal Reserve. Are they good news for the economy as borrowers catch a break, or a sign of impending recession as they were in 2001 and 2007?
Cathie Wood has started buying Tesla Inc. shares after selling them for most of last year. Her purchases come at a time when Wall Street’s outlook on the electric vehicle maker is darkening rapidly.
The US stock market had a great 2023 with the S&P 500 Index gaining 24% and the Nasdaq 100 Index having its best year since 1999, but mom-and-pop investors may have missed out on the excitement.
The Federal Reserve is trying to find the right time to start deliberating about how it will extract itself from its balance sheet unwind, a signal that the end might be closer than previously expected.
A largely invisible driver of the green transition is rapidly gaining backers among some of the world’s largest investors, even as other climate initiatives falter.
I spotlight the unique functions, methodologies, and values that coaches and consultants bring to the professional table.
My “1099 letter” value-add will streamline tax season for your office and clients.
Those facing the end of their lives often express regret about not pursuing their dreams and aspirations.
I’ll share my top 10 areas of focus where I see advisors receive the highest gain for achieving success and potential ideas for you and your team this coming year.
Can the Magnificent Seven retain its crown? Or will some subset of the 493 other S&P 500 stocks and their neglected sectors take the throne in 2024?
Economists are used to the idea that intervening in concrete ways — spending on development projects, for example, or on social services — can improve outcomes. But what about psychological interventions?
Recessions are notoriously difficult to predict. At the end of 2019, for example, many pundits were forecasting a recession simply because the boom had gone on for so long.
The dollar kicked off the new year with its biggest daily jump since March as traders pared back bets on the scale of the Federal Reserve’s 2024 interest-rate reductions.
One often-made argument in favor of stocks says investors should dive in before roughly $6 trillion of money-market cash gets redeployed into equity assets globally.
Traders hoping that a pan-markets year-end rally would pick up where it left off got the opposite on 2024’s first trading day, a session that featured one of the worst-ever concerted drops in stocks and bonds to start a year.
While overall economic inflation has slowed over the past 18 months, health insurance costs keep going up.
What would it take for your qualified prospects to feel so confident after an initial meeting with you that they felt it wasn’t necessary to see any other advisors and they were ready to hire you on the spot?
Economists did not believe it was possible, but they’ve been wrong a lot lately, and in their defense it has only ever happened once (or maybe twice) before: We may be witnessing that rare achievement known as a soft landing.
Here’s a look at some of the biggest winners and losers in 2023, plus a few investments that sat somewhere in the middle.
The surge in consumer prices that drove inflation way past central banker’s targets in recent years triggered a wave of interest-rate hikes.
One of the big surprises of 2023 was the resurgence of US growth stocks. The tech-heavy S&P 500 Growth Index outpaced its counterpart Value Index by 7.82 percentage points last year, including dividends, after trailing it badly in 2022.
Bitcoin surpassed $45,000 for the first time in nearly two years as anticipation of an approval of an exchange-traded fund investing directly in the biggest token intensified.
US stocks are likely to take a breather from their rapid gains before a potential fresh catalyst arrives in the form of the next earnings season, according to Oppenheimer Asset Management.
The US Treasury market posted its first annual gain since 2020 as slowing growth and inflation bolstered views that the Federal Reserve’s campaign of interest-rate increases is likely over.
Life insurance is one industry that has historically overlooked women’s buying power.
Tweedy Browne is one of the most respected value managers. In this wide-ranging interview with its investment team, they explain why the opportunity set they are seeing among stocks is the best in 20-plus years.
Ever since the world was hit by a once-in-a-century pandemic, there’s been a lot of talk about “normalization.”
The dollar is poised for its worst year since the onset of the pandemic as Wall Street bets the Federal Reserve is set to lower interest rates after reining in prices.
All across Wall Street, on equities desks and bond desks, at giant firms and niche outfits, the mood was glum. It was the end of 2022 and everyone, it seemed, was game-planning for the recession they were convinced was coming.
Since the beginning of the century, when he started following the industry that makes silicon and germanium, whose units are measured in a billionth of a meter, or a nanometer, Adam Benjamin has helped investors profit from the smartest part of the world.
Are you a Grinch?
One of Cathie Wood’s exchange-traded funds has executed a massive shake-up in its Bitcoin-related holdings as the cryptocurrency rounds out a blockbuster year.
The “vibecession” that has confounded economists for the past two years is finally behind us.
Around the world, major cities are struggling with a severe crisis: Housing has become so expensive that it’s repelling skilled workers, undermining growth and even fomenting political extremism.
Educating clients, reaffirming their financial goals and addressing other key issues are vital tools for maintaining a steady course during volatile times.
If you own bond funds in a taxable account, it is possible to turn some of the SEC yield into long-term capital gains taxed at lower rates, which could save a bundle. Here’s how.
When financial planning pioneer Sidney Kess passed away last September at the age of 97, he was long-established as an active thought leader, contributing to the field for over 70 years.
It has been my tradition to informally rate the investment-related books I read in the past year. Here is my list of winners and losers.
After a year marred by the biggest US bank failures since the 2008 financial crisis, the nation’s largest lender is on familiar footing — scooping up a weakened rival, reeling in its clients and minting record profits along the way.
The soft-landing scenario that investors see for next year points to further gains in US stocks. But it also dims the prospect of another stretch of wild outperformance for the technology giants that dominated in 2023.
This year’s hottest options trade is catching on with Wall Street’s nerd contingent.
Crypto hedge funds that survived a bruising 2022 are recovering, and many are thriving. Some are even expecting a banner 2024.
Whatever you’ve been told about your retirement, odds are that it’s wrong. Saving enough for your retirement, and investing the right way, are truly among the hardest of all financial problems. In many ways, it’s more difficult than running a large endowment or hedge fund — and yet we all must do it.
Albert Edwards, Societe Generale SA's chief global strategist, hasn't been the top-ranked Extel survey macro analyst for the past 20 years because he's an optimist.
Great articles don’t always get the readership they deserve. We’ve posted the 10 most-widely read investment and planning articles for the past year here and the top practice management articles here. Below are another 10 that you might have missed, but I believe merit reading.
The growing gap between the rate on the Federal Reserve’s nascent funding facility and what the central bank pays institutions parking reserves suggests officials will let the program expire in March, according to Wrightson ICAP.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s head of global currency, rates and emerging-markets strategy says he’s learned two main lessons from one of the biggest — and most-common — bad calls of 2023: the bet on post-pandemic China’s reopening boom.
Something odd is happening to the world’s most valuable resource. Time is simultaneously speeding up and slowing down. We live in a world of instant communications and superfast internet. We also live in a world of infrastructure projects that crawl along for decades.
Home prices in the US rose for a ninth straight month, reaching a fresh record as buyers battled for a stubbornly tight supply of listings.
Last year at this time, 85% of economists in one poll predicted a recession this year — and that was an optimistic take compared to the 100% probability of a recession forecast two months earlier.