Your Survival Guy doesn’t want you to be in the interest rate prediction business because the talking heads just might end up being wrong. Sure, the Fed funds rate may come down, but what if the buyers for the rest of the yield curve have a different opinion? Bond prices trade in anticipation of what’s to come six to twelve months from today, much like stocks do. The fact that we need to even talk about the direction of interest rates and the associated guesswork is a shame. A gold standard that sets the value of a dollar with the same certainty that there are twelve inches in a foot and … [Read more...]

When you roll over a 401(k) to a Rollover IRA, you need to remember the default is to put the money in cash. Greg Iacurci explains at CNBC: Many investors unknowingly make a costly mistake when rolling their money from a 401(k) plan to an individual retirement account: leaving their money in cash. Rollovers from a workplace retirement plan to an IRA are common after reaching certain milestones like changing jobs or retiring. About 5.7 million people rolled a total $618 billion to IRAs in 2020, according to most recent IRS data. However, many investors who move their money to an IRA park … [Read more...]

Why does the Federal Reserve want so desperately to lower rates? It's about servicing the debt. The United States has rapidly run up its debt load, and refinancing all that debt at high rates will be difficult to pay for. So even if it means additional inflation, the Federal Reserve plans to lower rates. Action Line: The value of the dollar has been ignored by American politicians completely since the 1970s, and before that, it had been eroded since the days of Woodrow Wilson. America desperately needs a return to the gold standard, but that doesn't appear imminent. Don't just stand and … [Read more...]

There’s a lot of slicing and dicing going on in today’s markets. When you have more ETFs than stocks to buy, that’s a problem. In The Wall Street Journal, Jason Zweig wonders if there's any asset left to make an ETF out of. He writes that "Good new investing ideas are getting harder to come by." He continues: Giant firms like Apollo Global Management, Blackstone and KKR, whose private-equity funds invest in corporate buyouts, would love to launch ETFs. That would enable them to wrap their expensive strategies in a cheap package, creating a potentially vast new source of demand. This week … [Read more...]

If you have a 529 plan that exceeds what was needed for education costs, there may be a way to roll it over into a Roth IRA. Laura Saunders explains in The Wall Street Journal: It happens more than you think, given the spiraling costs of college: People who save money for a child’s education expenses in tax-favored 529 plans wind up with leftover dollars in them. Perhaps the student got a scholarship or chose a lower-cost school—or even took a different path in life. Now there’s a new way to tackle this problem. A law that took effect this year allows unused 529 funds to be transferred to … [Read more...]

Investors are getting nervous about the stock market and are making moves to more traditionally defensive sectors of the market. Remember to stay diversified because it’s not what you invest in but how you invest that stirs the drink. Hardika Singh reports in The Wall Street Journal: Investors are playing defense ahead of the Federal Reserve’s looming interest-rate decision. They are piling into corners of the market that are considered safety plays, after a roaring first half powered by big technology stocks. Shares of real-estate, utilities and consumer-staples companies are among the … [Read more...]

Video game workers. Now, that’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one. What’s noteworthy is the continued softening of sales post-pandemic. I like Microsoft’s positioning to reduce its video game workforce in the face of what might be a slowdown in demand. Sarah E. Needleman reports for The Wall Street Journal: Microsoft is laying off approximately 650 employees from its videogame business, the tech giant’s latest move to cut costs after its $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year. The layoffs affect mostly workers in corporate and support roles and are being done to … [Read more...]