There are three credit card signup offers which are slated to end on Monday, March 14th: Chase Southwest Personal Cards Referral Offer: 30,000 Points + Companion Pass Through 3/14/22 Capital One Premium âVenture Xâ Card With 100,000 Points + $200 Signup Bonus ($395 Fee, $300 Travel Credit, 10k Annual Bonus) Capital One Spark Cash Plus […]
As a low-income student, figuring out how to attend college can seem like a grueling process. It’s not even unheard of for college students to face insecurity with their housing situation. A study published in 2021 found that of students surveyed across 22 schools, 44.1% were classified as food insecure, while 52.3% were experiencing housing […]
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Credit hours are the building blocks of a college career. They measure progress and define full- or part-time status, or degree types such as bachelors or masters. And these factors determine federal aid eligibility. A credit hour is defined as one classroom hour and two hours of student work per week. Students who take 12 […]
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You won’t need your tissues and nose spray in these spots.
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There is an old joke that some statisticians tell, that âa person with their head in an oven and their feet in the freezer is comfortable â on average.â Statisticians are not known for their sense of humor (clearly), but the joke is an effective warning about some of the shortcomings of relying on averages.
Statistically, a simple average camouflages extremes within its sample data. And, while the statisticianâs joke is somewhat extreme, it is no less extreme than the actual returns in the long-run average annual returns for stocks and bonds that set many investorsâ return expectations.
If quizzed, it is likely that many investors would estimate the average annualized returns for U.S. stocks and bonds to be about 10% and 5%, respectively. Those averages are composed of decades of returns and describe history perfectly. However, although they describe the average annualized returns, they are a far cry from the typical or “average” experience. Â In fact, in only two years from 1926 through 2020 did both the stock and bond market deliver returns within 2% (+/-) of their historical averages (see Figure 1).
Source: Liberty Wealth Advisors, using data from Morningstar Direct
In 2021, U.S. stocks  gained 25.7%, while U.S. bonds lost 1.5%.* While it is fair to say that it was a great year for stocks, is it fair to say that it was a bad year for bonds because they didnât return their 5.7%* average?  Probably not. The only thing rarer than a year with âaverageâ returns might be a year that investors appreciate their bond allocations amid a bull market for stocks.
For those of you thinking about abandoning bonds, here are some ideas that may help:
While investors prefer gains to losses, they also prefer small losses to big losses. While far from being predictive, Figure 1 demonstrates that negative returns in bonds have tended to be both infrequent and modest. In fact, the bond marketâs worst annual return was a loss of 5.1% in 1994. However, the stocks of the S&P 500 index have posted daily losses that bad or worse 25 times since 1926.
Often, itâs hard for investors to see the benefits that high-quality bonds can add to their portfolios, especially when the returns they are posting are modest â or even modestly negative. And today, concerns for higher interest rates due to higher-than-expected inflation are making it even more challenging for investors to ignore some punditsâ suggestions that holding bonds is a bad idea.
I was given a magnifying glass when I was young, and I started looking at everything through it. Eventually, I looked at the Sunday comics and realized that for all I saw, I wasnât seeing everything. The cartoons were nothing but a variety of colored dots! Magazine photos, too. It made me wonder how much else I was missing because I wasnât looking closely enough. Now, I realize that when I was close enough to see the dots, I missed the bigger picture â literally.
Similarly, the dots in Figure 1 paint a picture thatâs easy to overlook when youâre too narrowly focused: The principal benefit of investment-grade bonds isnât their frequency of positive returns but the infrequency of large, negative returns. And, yes, if the returns in Figure 1 were inflation-adjusted, the frequency of negative returns for both bonds and stocks would increase. However, that would not change what Figure 1 tells us: High-quality bonds in a portfolio can help moderate the volatility of stocks.
A well-diversified portfolio can benefit from bonds: More likely than not, a bad year for bonds will be much better than a bad day for stocks. While that certainly wonât insure your portfolio against losses, it can certainly help moderate the losses when the markets turn intemperate.
Having a well-diversified portfolio that includes an allocation to high-quality bonds can help keep a bad day in the stock market from turning into a bad year for your portfolio.
* Stock performance as measured by the CRSP U.S. Total Market Index. Bond performance as measured by the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Float Adjusted Index. Bond average is a geometric mean return for the Ibbotson® SBBI® U.S. Intermediate-term (5-Year) Government Bonds (Total return).
Sometimes trying to guess whatâs on the mind of buyers can be a difficult challenge. While some of those answers vary, statistics are showing us that despite location or style of home, buyers have one thing on their minds: sustainability and climate change.
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Mr. Market’s roller-coaster ride continued apace Tuesday, as indications that the U.S. would ban the import of Russian energy became real.
After days of speculation about whether America would take this next step, President Joe Biden announced the U.S. would cease imports of Russian crude oil, natural gas and coal.
“The decision today is not without cost here at home,” Biden said. “Putin’s war is already hurting American families at the gas pump. Since Putin began his military build-up at Ukrainian borders ⦠the price of gas at the pump in America went up 75 cents. And with this action, it’s going to go up further.”
U.S. crude oil prices unsurprisingly continued their recent climb, settling up 3.6% to $123.70 per barrel â a closing level not seen since August 2008, but also well off intraday highs above $129.
“The crude supply outlook will struggle to make up for Russian supplies over the next few months, so whatever pricing dips occur could be short-lived,” says Edward Moya, senior market strategist at currency data provider OANDA.
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The prospect of sustained high crude prices helped the energy sector (+1.6%) score another win, with the likes of Valero Energy (VLO, +7.8%) and Schlumberger (SLB, +7.1%) leading the pack. A few battered areas of the market, including travel, also rebounded â Booking Holdings (BKNG, +4.5%), United Airlines (UAL, +3.3%) and Carnival (CCL, +2.3%) all finished well in the green.
The major indexes were all over the place throughout the day, swinging from modest losses early to robust gains, then pulling back into the red by the closing bell. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 0.6% to 32,632, the S&P 500 declined 0.7% to 4,170 and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.3% further into bear-market territory to 12,795.
YCharts
Other news in the stock market today:
One of the best pieces of advice for fading the market’s current volatility hearkens to a basic tenet of the buy-and-hold crowd: Sit back and collect dividends.
“If you are looking for less volatility these days, shares of dividend paying companies can often offer some stability when the volatility index (VIX) spikes,” says Lindsey Bell, chief markets and money strategist for Ally Invest. “Perhaps now more than ever, prioritizing profitability and steady operations might be a safe move for your portfolio. As inflation fears persist, owning shares in firms that generate strong cash flows today could help buffer your risk of higher consumer prices over the next year.”
Any list of sturdy dividend stocks is going to begin with the Dividend Aristocrats â 66 companies that have raised their payouts annually, without interruption, for at least 25 years (but often much longer). But investors can go after dividends in myriad other ways.
Oil and gas master limited partnerships (MLPs), for instance, can help you enjoy energy-market gains while netting yields in the 8%-9% range.
Or, you can specifically target dividend stocks of different stripes that have gone on sale this year. These seven income plays are hanging from the bargain rack right now, and each of them provides a better yield (by varying amounts) than the S&P 500 average.
In the financing world, personal loans are unique in that the funds arenât tied to a specific purpose. A personal loan offers freedom and flexibility to spend your funds as you see fit, with few exceptions. With the extra funds a large personal loan provides, you could cover higher-cost expenses like a single, substantial expense […]
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