Headlines
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Lofty Goals, Limited Means: Finding Ways to Boost Your Investments
If you're ready to start investing or ramp up your current investment initiatives but there just doesn't seem to be enough money left over at the end of the month, don't give up. The following strategies could help you manage your money better and free up resources for your investment goals.
- Start budgeting. While most of us know what a budget is, how many of us actually use one? A budget can help you chart your cash flow by recording all of your sources of income and your fixed and variable monthly expenses. Once you determine where your money is going using a budget, you can prioritize your needs and potentially identify expenses that could be eliminated.
Read more on Finding Ways to Boost Your Investments.
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The Markets
Everyone makes mistakes. Some people learn from them.
In GMO's March 2016 white paper, James Montier and Philip Pilkington continued to explore the Federal Reserve's influence on the stock market. It was a process they'd begun in 2015 as they sought "...to understand why our forecast for the S&P 500 had been too pessimistic over the last two decades or so." Inspired by research done at the New York Federal Reserve, they found:
"...sometime around 1985 the market really started to react to FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] days. Like the Fed economists, we found that for the past 30 or so years these announcement days have had a major, and increasing, impact on the stock market...In fact, FOMC days account for 25 percent of the total real returns we have witnessed since 1984!"
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By the Numbers
Notes: S&P 500, Gold, DJ-UBS Commodity Index returns exclude reinvested dividends (gold does not pay a dividend) and the three-, five-, and 10-year returns are annualized ... more important disclosure mentions found here. (We urge you to read the entire disclosure statement.)
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