*spoiler alert: No, they are not. As I write this on the morning of February 13th, 2025, we are almost 6 weeks into the New Year and so far the S&P 500 is up 3.12% in 2025. The S&P 500 is a group of about 500 of the largest publicly traded stocks in the United States. It includes big names we’ve all heard of such as Google, Tesla, and Apple. It also includes many companies you may not have heard of such as Idexx Laboratories. They “help pets lead fuller lives by giving veterinarians the tools, technology, and insights to see clearly and get the answers they need.” How will this group of 500 stocks do the rest of the year? I do not know, and …
Investing
Six Years Later – Micro Investing with Acorns
Six years ago, I wrote about my lifelong passion (some would say obsession) for spare change. This dates back to counting the spare change and “egg money” in my grandmother’s chipped gravy boat in the 70’s. Today, this is the spare change stash in my office: But here in the 21st century, I don’t have too many cash transactions, and therefore not a lot of physical spare change. Enter the micro investing app Acorns* which invests your digital spare change. Six years ago, I signed up for Acorns and linked my checking account. The checking account is my “funding source”. Then I linked my credit card. You can link more than one card including debit cards. For …
You Must be Present to Win
I have such wonderful clients. Many of them send me items of interest. Recently, my client JC, a former J.P. Morgan employee, sent me a gold mine: the J.P. Morgan Guide to Retirement 2024. It is 53 pages chock full of interesting data. You can see the whole thing HERE. But the page that really grabbed my attention was page 47 - “Impact of being out of the Market”. You can see page 47 in its entirety HERE. It features this graph: Let’s walk through it. This graph shows the growth over 20 years of a hypothetical $10,000 investment made in the S&P 500 Index on January 1st, 2004. The S&P 500 Index is a group of 500 of the largest companies in the United …
Is Your Home A Good Investment?
The inspiration for today’s missive comes from Nick Murray’s incomparable industry newsletter. Last month, the Wall Street Journal’s Luxury Homes Section ran an interesting article: “Groucho Marx’s Onetime Long Island Home Hits the Market for $2.3 Million” The star paid $27,000 for the property in Great Neck on New York’s Long Island, in 1926. He lived there until 1931. Marx, previously a city dweller, had difficulty adjusting to the suburbs. He said, “I am becoming well versed in the four topics of conversation, which are of paramount importance in a small community, i.e., domestic help, golf, bridge, and the trappings of mice.” Sounds kind of …
The Road to ‘Average is Bumpy.
After two posts about spending, specifically spending for joy, I’m back to my regularly scheduled programming: Save, Invest, Repeat. Today, we talk about stock market ‘averages’. Stocks, also known as equities, are the growth engines of investment portfolios. The S&P 500 is a group of stocks from the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the United States. It includes companies you’ve surely heard of such as Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Berkshire Hathaway (aka Warren Buffett). It also includes companies you’ve likely never heard of such as Cummins, Inc. a company that makes “diesel, natural gas, electric and hybrid powertrains and powertrain-related components” …
