Wednesday Reading List
ICYMI:
Your Financial Planning Checklist – Keep your finances in order using this financial planning checklist I created as part of my Beyond the Basics roadmap to grow and protect your wealth.
Pandemic Darlings That Never Bounced Back by Investment Talk
Beware of story stocks. Remember those brilliant pandemic investing ideas, including Peloton and Zoom? It didn’t end well for them, and this piece shares the painful details.
The stock market’s bottom line is looking up 👍 by TKer
Q2 earnings season is basically in the books, and it was a high for S&P 500 earnings. You can get twisted around in the details why, the macro forecasts, election concerns, and economic numbers and forget that corporate earnings drive long-term stock prices.
How to Predict a Recession by A Wealth of Common Sense
Speaking of macro forecasts, we’ve been in a recession for 1% of the time since July, 2009 despite the fact that you will always find someone calling for one to either be around the corner or claiming that we’re currently in one. Ben looks back at the missed calls and concludes “It’s more helpful to prepare for the eventuality of recessions than to try to predict their timing and magnitude.”
New vehicle prices decline for 10th straight month by Axios
New and used car prices are down, and incentives to purchase are up. However, insurance costs are still high and car prices are still elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Mass deportation would accomplish nothing by Noahpinion
Mass deportation is being presented as a way to “save Medicare, reduce the cost of housing, education, and health care, improve government finances”. Immigration has a negligible effect on cost of living since the demand increase is offset by the increased labor supply. Illegal immigration can strain local budgets, but nationally fiscal impacts are slightly positive. Immigrants aren’t eligible for most Federal welfare benefits, and illegal immigrants aren’t eligible for Medicare or Social Security. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enforce the border, there are just smarter ways of dealing with this.
The Art of Patient Investing by Meketa
The continued outperformance of U.S. large cap stocks has investors questioning the benefits of diversification. This piece by a large investment consultant reminds us that diversification protects us from the inability to predict, helps smooth out downturns during market struggles, and provides us money to rebalance into stocks when they’re down by owning things that have gone up. It then pivots to look at a few areas that deserve patience now based on relative valuations: value stocks, small caps, international stocks, and investment grade bonds.
Do I have to pay my credit card annual fee? by Heritage Financial
There are options available to investigate if you want to try and skirt paying that credit card annual fee.
Book Recommendation
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer
A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today’s world
Boston Corner
Real life “Clue” comes to Boston
Things to Do in Boston This Weekend
Things to Do This Week in Boston