If you were following business news in 2010, you must have come across one or two headlines bemoaning America’s “lost decade”. Between 2009 and 2012, there were many discussions in the business media and many columns were written in the press on this subject. How investors have … [Read more...] about Revisiting the lost decade of U.S. stocks
LongTermInvesting
My lucky break with Roth IRA
This was the year 2000 -- at the height of the Internet craze. I had two years of cash contributions ($2K max was allowed at the time) piled up in my Roth IRA. So, in March 2000, I bought $4K worth of Amazon shares (at about $70 per share) in my account. I can’t be sure why I … [Read more...] about My lucky break with Roth IRA
Stock investing is not a zero-sum game
Why do I say that? Because people often think of the stock market as a roller coaster. It goes up for a while, but then goes down, eventually ending up at the same place where it began, and then the cycle starts over. The implication is that one must catch the up-cycle to make … [Read more...] about Stock investing is not a zero-sum game
Don’t fall for steady returns
Why everyone and their grandmothers don’t get rich investing in the stock market? It sounds straightforward enough to invest. All one has to do is buy an appropriate market index fund (or ETF) and hold it for ten or twenty years (the well-known buy-and-hold strategy). If you … [Read more...] about Don’t fall for steady returns
Let smart people work for you!
The best thing about long-term oriented stock investing is that it doesn’t require lot of work by us, the investors. Instead, we loan our money to people running actual businesses – and they work for us. We own shares in these public companies – so when they make money, we make … [Read more...] about Let smart people work for you!
Yes stocks are volatile
… but only in the short run. As we saw in this previous post, stocks go down 10% or more every year. More often than not, they also recover quickly. So what return could we expect in a given year? Here is a good chart from J.P. Morgan. It shows the range of annual returns that … [Read more...] about Yes stocks are volatile
I use cash as dry powder
Long-term investors face inevitable bear markets. Stocks may go down 20%, 30%, or occasionally even 40% - 50% before recovering. Bear markets last from six months to two years but it takes longer for stocks to recover to their previous peak prices. As an investor, I have gone … [Read more...] about I use cash as dry powder
Nobody’s good at predicting recessions
Various organizations and economists in the USA try their hand in predicting when the next recession might occur – none of them have been very successful. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is the de facto authority that marks the beginning and the end of each … [Read more...] about Nobody’s good at predicting recessions
It’s not healthy to check stock prices every day
If you check your stock portfolio every minute the market is open, you are setting yourself up for failure. Even every day is not good for your portfolio’s health. Perhaps every week is too frequent. Two reasons why this is so: Every-day price changes are random and carry no … [Read more...] about It’s not healthy to check stock prices every day
Most investors underperform the stock market
The bad news is that we, the individual investors, collectively don’t do so well when investing in stocks. The good news is that most of this underperformance is due to our own behavior and therefore can be fixed. Let’s first look at the evidence of our underperformance over … [Read more...] about Most investors underperform the stock market