with 91% of companies reporting earnings for 1st quarter , they are up 26% over last year . that sits well for equities . inflation is low and so far the pessimism is high . bull markets have never ended with this much pessimism . i warned for years that long term bonds and gold could be problems go...

"If you lose money for the firm by bad decisions, I will be very understanding. If you lose reputation for the firm, I will be ruthless." Pm has been doing awful for years . Smoking is on the decline . a simple index fund would have blown it away without having to take on not only market ...

with individual stocks you add a layer of risk to just market volatility to worry about . now you have to pick the right stock ,in the right sector at the right time in just the right market sentiment . even if you got that right you still have to worry about what their competitors have on the drawi...

mathjak, I love your high-risk passion. Seriously. risk and volatility are two very different things . the natural market cycles for a long term investor are volatile and owning diversified funds is volatile but has little risk . risk comes when you try to pick individual stocks and are held captiv...

except i run a 50/50 mix in retirement . we spin off all our short term money from it so my high risk days are long gone

any system you stick to can work very well . the keyword being stick to . the problem i see over and over and data proves is that those who go more conservative in hopes of staying put don't . they just have lower trigger points of fear as any loss to their brains triggers poor investor behavior or ...

We certainly agree on that. Betting heavily on the bad times when markets are up traditionally 2/3's of the time are betting against the house. Averages and charts are to slow in response today and are going to whipsaw you

Retirees have been generating cash by rebalancing portfolios which is why shorter term money goes in to bonds and cash instruments . But long term money especially in the accumulation stage certainly needs no mitigating . Even at 65 you have money that will not be used to eat for 25-30 years. In fac...

What do you think about this strategy? You choose 4 funds: - Global (or American or European...) stock index - Inverse ETF for Global (or American or European...) stock index - Long-term treasury fund - Gold fund 100% of your variable portolio goes to the fund with the best performance in a 3 month...

buckets are nothing more than mental masturbation . in fact not only is there no help from them but they can actually hurt you . our brains like to compartmentalize . they are comfortable like that . but using a fixed allocation and simply rebalansing seems to get better results . as kitces said: EX...

no ,those dates are the worst historical dates for retirees in any allocation and they are the dates the 4% safe withdrawal rate was based on . all of those dates failed and you needed to reduce to about 3.70% with any allocation over 35% equities to survive the stress test 100% . but those dates fa...

mental is a different issue from what makes financial sense . my wife would not let me ever go higher than 50% equities in retirement . she already lost half her savings in the dot com crash when her first husband died and she went to the adviser at her bank for help . so he loaded her up on tech an...

even spending down directly from 100% stocks as a hypothetical retiree (which i would not do ) , you actually did just fine . without the weight of cash and bonds the difference in gains over time allows spending even in down years with almost the same success rate as 50/50 . if i remember 50/50 has...

there are 2 issues with that premise . there is no guarantee the pp will hold even 2% real return when rates rise on bonds . gold ,stocks and long term treasuries could suck . the other is the balance left is a consideration too . i don't use the pp because as a long term investor , there really was...

i have seen so few actual crashes in my 30 plus years as an investor . as peter lynch said , more money has been given up in preparation for or waiting for the next down turn then ends up actually being lost in the downturn . it really does not matter what you use to model at this point . in the pas...

all the stress testing of all these portfolio allocations do is identify what failed . it is the high speed numbers crunching we have today that was able to analyze the common denominator to all the worst case outcomes for a retiree . 1907,1929,1937.1965/1966 were all the poster children for the wor...

to sustain a 4% safe withdrawal rate it has taken a 2% average real return over the first 15 years of a retirement time frame to last . if you don't have at least a 2% real return average the first 15 years no matter how good the next years are the risk of failing is very very high . all 30 year tim...

life expectancy means lots of different things .life expectancy from birth means little many times . while the max age we live to has fallen since 2014 , more and more of us are living to older ages . as kitces pointed out : For instance, a child born in 2014 has a life expectancy (average age at de...

i don't miss vanguard and their hassles one bit . deciding to get a chase private client account and their sapphire reserve card not only got us a few thousand in perks but offers so many other perks too . all we are doing is having chase watch our VOO etf to qualify. we actually got a free trip pla...

if you cross the income brackets in medicare the increase in premiums can be a lot . they actually have a new lower threshold going in to place in 2018 where you get bumped up . the thresholds are pretty high but remember all it takes is an asset sale that produces a high gain and you are there. ty...

I have a wife that's 17 years younger than me (I'm 68), and with her working we still have a slight positive cash flow in the normal monthly budget. So I'm hard-pressed to see how delaying SS to get the maximum amount isn't a no-brainer for us. . delaying is always a mixed bag unique to each of us ...

if you cross the income brackets in medicare the increase in premiums can be a lot . they actually have a new lower threshold going in to place in 2018 where you get bumped up . the thresholds are pretty high but remember all it takes is an asset sale that produces a high gain and you are there. typ...

muni income is taxable as far as getting ss taxed , it is added back in to your magi Ah dangint man you got me... I was just giving a flippant example... replace that with an over-funded life policy. i hate that report post thing . i just reported that post instead of editing . anyway you have to b...

muni income is taxable as far as getting ss taxed , it is added back in to your magi

most americans do not have enough in assets to safely delay social security if they retire earlier . they would spend down to much . but those who will have rmd tax issues will likely be better candidates since those issues tend to go with bigger balances . for most it would make little sense to del...