My portfolio – January update – positive returns
It’s the first update of the new year and the latter part of 2016 as well as the first week of 2017 continued to show positive returns. The S&P 500 was up 0.35% since the last update; nothing major but anything above zero is good to see. I’ve talked about valuation in the last portfolio update so I won’t reiterate that here. We’ll soon get a big group of Q4 reports that will likely give some clearer insight into what’s expected for 2017. If Q4 earnings show growth, it’ll be the first time the S&P 500 index has show growth in two consecutive quarters since Q4/Q1 2014/2015. That would be good news…
The story behind Health Savings Accounts
We’re back with another round of yearly open enrollments, benefit choices and premium increases and I thought it’d be a good time to talk about Health Savings Accounts(HSA), an underutilized tool when it comes to saving for you retirement(early or otherwise). An HSA is the most tax-advantaged account available to most investors and has many benefits that make it very attractive to most individuals. However, it is not one that’s commonly discussed in the same areas as IRAs or 401k and that’s a shame because HSAs are probably the best of breed when it comes to retirement savings accounts. The Basics HSAs came into being with the 2003 medicare reform…
Time in the market beats timing the market
Investing is relatively simple if you really think about it. First, you take a quick cursory look at the basket of available stocks out there. let’s round up and say there are currently around 9000 stocks trading on U.S. stock exchanges. Each of these stocks represent an equity stake in a vast variety of different companies. Some of these companies are traded on large stock exchanges that are monitored heavily by the financial world and require filing of regular audited financial reports. Others trade over the counter on the pink sheets system which has no regular filing requirements. These companies may be large-caps, mid-caps, small-caps, micro-caps and even nano-caps depending…