It's been a boring year in the stock market. If you bought Vanguard's S&P 500 ETF on October 16, 2017, and held it until this last Friday, you would have earned a mere 10% in price appreciation, and a mere 2-4% in dividends (I can't be bothered to look up the exact historical dividend yield at the moment). If you assume 2% inflation (and no, I don't know why people assume … [Read more...] about Something finally happened in the stock market. What did you do?
investing
It’s October, time to shuffle around your high-interest accounts
As I wrote last month, my favorite high-interest checking account, the Free Rewards Checking account from Consumers Credit Union, has dropped the maximum balance eligible for their highest interest rate tier from $20,000 to $10,000 (while raising that rate up to 5.09%). While the account is still more than worthwhile (it also offers unlimited worldwide ATM fee reimbursement), … [Read more...] about It’s October, time to shuffle around your high-interest accounts
What goes into a good active savings strategy?
A headline passed across my Twitter feed yesterday that seemed like a good bank account signup bonus: "$500 Bonus for New Money Market Account at Capital One." $500 is a lot of money, so I clicked through to check out what the requirements were. As usual, there were some deposit requirements, in this case a $50,000 deposit of outside money, held in the account for 6-8 weeks … [Read more...] about What goes into a good active savings strategy?
Winners and losers from changes to Consumers Credit Union Free Rewards Checking accounts (and why it matters)
I've been an enthusiastic fan of high-interest checking and savings accounts ever since you could earn 6% APY on your PayPal account balance back in the early 2000's (unfortunately I was in college at the time and barely had two quarters to rub together at 6% APY). The boring reason is that the more work your risk-free assets are able to do, the less work your riskier … [Read more...] about Winners and losers from changes to Consumers Credit Union Free Rewards Checking accounts (and why it matters)
Index construction is the most important, least understood part of the indexing revolution
Modestly improved investor education and extensive marketing have made investors today more conscious of the costs of their investment decisions, and helped promote the use of index-tracking mutual funds and exchange-traded funds as opportunities to reduce expenses and allow investors to keep more of their investment returns. While cost-consciousness is a clear positive for … [Read more...] about Index construction is the most important, least understood part of the indexing revolution