My blog provides valuable insights into Nobel Prize-winning financial strategies for investors. By utilizing decades of worldwide peer-reviewed capital markets research and analysis, I demonstrate how to build better investment portfolios with lower risks. I also examine common financial media misinformation and how investors can make better financial decisions.
Sadly, as is the case in any crisis, there are those among us who are looking to capitalize on cruelty and take advantage of heightened vulnerabilities. Hackers are trying to lure victims to click on COVID-19 related hyperlinks that contain malicious software and other computer viruses. In some cases, these scams look like official messages from the government and they send people to fake websites where their sensitive information can be stolen.
The following guidelines can help you protect yourself from these digital scams and stay clear of suspicious links you may come across in your internet travels.
On March 27 the President signed into law the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) to address the unprecedented public health and economic crisis related to COVID-19.
This $2 trillion bill is meant to impact both individuals and businesses and contains significant tax-savings measures. It could affect prior tax years while also creating immediate cash-flow.
With the UK going into a total self-imposed quarantine, several large American cities in lockdown, and distressing scenes coming out of Spain and Italy, life right now feels chaotic and insecure. It's a crisis. The economy has ground to a halt.
These are the worst of times.
And yet, there is hope. This is temporary. It will end. Already, there are reasons to be optimistic.
This article originally appeared on VisualCapitalist.com. View the original article here.
With all eyes on the COVID-19 pandemic and how its impact will be felt over the coming weeks and months, people are being bombarded with all kinds of noise and speculation.
Between a deadly virus, looming economic effects, and numerous government shutdowns, it’s clear that a fertile breeding ground has been created for misinformation, rumors, conspiracy theories, hot takes, and other potentially misleading content.
We are facing something we have never faced before in our lifetimes. That is a fact and, in a time, when the news of the pandemic spreading and the recommendations on social distancing getting broader by the day, it can be hard to feel certain or safe about anything.
As troubling as it is to watch the unprecedented market decline, we need to maintain our health and the health and safety of our family, friends, and neighbors as the number one priority. COVID-19 which emerged late in 2019 in China has spread rapidly worldwide since then and is a global pandemic. The measures taken by leaders around the globe have been strong leaving most children without a classroom to go to, parents working from home or without a job altogether and investors panicking about what is to come.
This disruption to daily life and our psyches is substantial and it’s terrible. The coming weeks will not be easy, but these measures are practical and prudent.
1. Financial science becomes a driving force in well-designed portfolios. Academic evidence casts light on the challenges with traditional investment approaches, such as security selection and market prediction, and pushes advisors toward more robust, research-informed investment strategies. 2. Theoretical and empirical research identifies drivers of investment returns. Research shows that stocks offering higher expected returns can be identified using company size, relative price, and profitability. For bonds, information in the yield curve and credit spreads reveals higher expected returns. 3. Global information and competition further advance the market’s pricing power. Each day, the global security markets process billions of dollars in trades between buyers and sellers—and their collective wisdom helps drive securities prices toward fair value.
Dimensional Fund Advisors’ David Booth on why you should change the way you think about investing.
It’s easy to feel anxious about investing these days. Those who claim they can foresee market moves are out in force, on screen after screen, citing factors such as trade wars or the inverted yield curve as signals that stocks will soon go down.
Maybe we will have a recession, maybe we won’t—but be wary of predictions on how markets will behave. It’s a losing game. The results of those who try to time markets or pick winners have been studied extensively, and there is no compelling evidence they do better than you would expect by chance.
The year 2019 served up many examples of the unpredictability of markets.
Interest rates that US policymakers expected to rise fell instead. American consumers’ confidence weakened as the year began,1 and news headlines broadcast fears of an economic slowdown. But investors who moved onto the sidelines may have missed the gains in the US stock market. As of the end of October, the S&P 500 was up more than 20% for the year on a total-return basis. That puts it on course for the best showing since 2013 should that gain hold through December.
