[This portfolio review about rising rates may contain affiliate links at no cost to you] Rising rates were the story this month as America’s strong economy kept barreling on. That meant bad things for high dividend payers like REITs, bonds and some riskier assets like small caps. It may seem counter intuitive that a strong economy would be bad for stocks. The problem comes from the prospect of rising inflation and the concern of a peak economic cycle. The flight to safety that may create combined with rising rates pushing equity valuations down led to mediocre results in the month. The reality is that rates have been low for quite…

[This portfolio review about domestic stocks may contain affiliate links at no cost to you] Domestic stocks continue to kill it this year leaving everything else in the dust. That was no different this month as domestic stocks outperformed foreign equities again. The information below from Personal Capital shows what I’m talking about. Since the last update, both the S&P 500 and Dow were in positive territory while foreign stocks lagged again. That’s no different from what I saw last update when I finally started lagging the market for the year. Having a 20% allocation to a struggling foreign stock base will do that to an investor. Still, the You…

[This portfolio review about lagging the market may contain affiliate links at no cost to you] It’s official. August is here and I’m lagging the market for the first time this year. The S&P 500 kicked butt since the last update and my portfolio didn’t keep up due to my exposure to bonds and international stocks. Here are the results since then according to Personal Capital. It’s natural that my portfolio which has some bonds and foreign stocks fell behind. My individual holdings, especially UNH and AAPL did well but my international stocks continued to suffer. One thing to remember is that lagging the market doesn’t mean anything in a…