The S&P 500 May Be Near the Most Dangerous Phase of The Bear Market

My Comments: Is it? Time alone will tell, but I’m doing my best to sit this one out. My best guess, like yours, will be either good or bad, depending on how the next few months play out. by Mott Capital Mgt. \ 7 AUG 2022 \ https://tinyurl.com/2q988542 History can act as a guide, not …

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The Retirement Life – The First of Many Steps

I’m sure you’re already aware the markets are very uncertain these days. For most of us, they’re down significantly for the year. For every pundit who says there’s a lot more downside to expect, there’s a pundit telling us we’ve essentially hit the bottom and the upside looks like a return to normal.   After …

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Insights About Your Retirement Savings

A sub-title for this blog post might be: Mutual Funds? Annuities? ETFs? Or what? My not so clever answer is “It depends…”. To which you will ask “on what?”. Here’s a list to start with: What types of investments have you been successful with? What is your level of fear that you’ll run out of …

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Investing for Retirement: What Price Are You Willing to Pay for Guarantees?

Life can be scary sometimes. It can be doubly scary when we realize personal financial decisions are inherently emotional decisions. Who among us has not made a bad choice along the way where money was involved? Conceptually, retirement is inherently personal. And the elephant in the room at first glance is almost exclusively a matter …

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Focus on Retirement Goals or Investments?

Have you got enough money? Is there a point in time when making new guesses about your retirement funds become an exercise in futility? Sure, you could probably work a few more years and have a few more bucks in the bank, but at what price? I’m reminded of the Social Security dictum that everything …

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Equity-Indexed Annuities As a Retirement Strategy

My Comments: With this topic, we’re dealing with mixed messages, both are in a foreign language. On one side are the brokerage firms and investment professionals whose expertise is probably exceptional, telling you what’s the best thing to do with your money. On the other side are insurance professionals whose income is largely a function …

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Americans Know They’re Not Ready for Retirement. But It’s Worse Than They Think

No one likes bad news. When it arrives almost daily, there is a tendency to treat it as noise and tune it out. When it involves retirement, tuning it out is easy since for most people, retirement is years away. Without a sense of urgency, it’s just another time consuming and relatively meaningless waste of …

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Strike Three: The Next Bear Market Ends The Game

Like a broken clock that’s right twice a day, I’ve been expecting a market crash for going on four years now. Will I ever be right? Most of us in the world of money don’t believe it’s different this time. And while none of us has a crystal ball, we’re almost unanimous there’s a bear …

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Don’t Be Shocked If Trump’s Economy Goes the Way of Bush’s

My Comments: We can all agree the economics is hard on your brain. There are so many variable and so few constants that talking about it is similar to describing the behavior of cats. Last week I attended a local economic summit where the featured speaker was Brent Meyer, an associate policy advisor and economist …

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What The “Big Money” Is Thinking

My Comments: Erik Conley’s blog has roughly 6,282 followers. I can only dream of having that many. This blog post of his summarizes Barron’s Big Money poll. He also says “…Big Money doesn’t necessarily mean Smart Money”. by Erik Conley / April 29, 2019 I've been an avid reader of Barron's magazine since the early …

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