Recapping the best personal finance articles from the past week with an expanded Boston Corner. The post Wednesday Reading List appeared first on ..read more

In Your Money This Week, we’re seeing a rotation from large caps to small caps that should matter to investors and learning how to protect ourselves after a terrible story about a lottery winner who got fleeced by their advisor. Small Caps Coming Up Big There’s a rotation from large cap to small cap stocks going on now, and more specifically from large cap tech behemoths to small caps. Large caps are stocks with a market cap (total dollar value of the company’s outstanding shares) of at least $10 billion, although they get significantly larger. The biggest company in the S&P 500, the U.S ..read more

Finding a good financial advisor takes work, but it’s not that complicated once you get down to it. In my experience, 75% of people who find a new advisor are working with one for the first time. They’re not firing their old advisor. Good advisors have strong client retention, so a great way to find one is a referral from someone you trust. Advisor referrals come from two main sources: Clients: ask your friends, family, or colleagues in the same situation if they have an advisor they’d recommend. Other professional advisors: your CPA, estate planner, insurance advisor, corporate lawyer, etc ..read more

Treasury Bond Market Faces Policy Tug-of-War by Charles Schwab Asset Management Yields have come down in the past week, helping bond prices, but the move lower could be capped by our unusually high peacetime deficit spending, election volatility, and inflationary tariffs. Focus on quality and higher duration to combat the reinvestment rate risk that comes with lower short-term yields. Powell Says Fed Must Try to ‘Stick to Its Knitting’ by Bloomberg Five key takeaways from Powell’s interview this week include that he plans to stay through his full-term into 2026, he’s more confident that inflat ..read more

Inflation and the Markets June’s CPI report showed a decline in inflation from May and the lowest CPI number we’ve had in three years (3%). The monthly drop was the first monthly decline in four years, and the number ex-food and energy was also better than expected. Nice news for consumers. Good news for those hoping for Fed rate cuts. Great news for people waiting for a stock market rotation out of large cap AI names into other large caps and small and mid cap stocks, because if the market’s reaction yesterday is any indication, it’s happening. Yeah, I know one day is meaningless and that’s ..read more

Just a Job to Do: Assessing the Labor Market by Charles Schwab Asset Management The labor market is weakening, and the unemployment rate has increased to 4.1%. A reliable recession indicator has been triggered because of this. However, this economy has shrugged off recession fears for a while. If the jobs data weakens, the Fed may cut rates before the 2% inflation target is hit. Time for a Rate Cut? by Professor Jeremy J. Siegel Professor Siegel says yes because of the labor market and economic weakness he is seeing (although he’s not predicting a recession). He also believes that growth will ..read more

To take a deeper dive into the quarter that was and where we may go from here, here are the Q3 2024 market guide charts that stood out to me from J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s Guide to the Markets slide deck. U.S. Stock Market Valuations The various valuation metrics in this chart highlight the fact that by most measures the S&P 500 is overvalued compared to its 30-year average. Looking at the valuation differences between U.S. growth and value stocks in the left chart shows that growth stocks are expensive compared to value stocks. The chart on the right shows that growth stocks have pe ..read more

The home insurance shock has investors concerned, finds ResiClub-Groundfloor survey by ResiClub 80% of landlords in the ResiClub-Groundfloor Housing Investor Survey said they’re concerned about future home insurance increases. The average rise in 2023 was 11.3%. If landlords pass their insurance increases through to their tenants (which is to be expected) will that hurt the push to 2% inflation the Fed is hoping for based on shelter inflation moderating? Buyback talk is cheap by Joachim Klement Share buyback announcements aren’t legally binding. “On average, only 58% of the buyback amount anno ..read more

Second Mouse.AI by Scott Galloway Looking at Apple to make the point that the first in innovation isn’t usually the one who profits from it. Apple has made a fortune off of this, including most recently with AI. As other firms wasted money on unprofitable AI ventures, Apple is now swooping in ready to capitalize on what they’ve learned and improve it. Interval Funds: Are They Worth What You Give Up? by Morningstar We’ve been using interval funds in select client portfolios. Less liquid than other mutual funds, but much more liquid than private investments, they provide exposure to asset classe ..read more

Election Risk Returns by Charles Schwab Asset Management Stock market volatility is at very low levels, but it could pick up (and indeed already has in France) due to potential populist gains in worldwide elections. Investors shouldn’t overreact to short-term moves tied to elections surprises as they can quickly reverse. In the long run a global populist shift creates the potential for policies that slow exports and raise inflation. Travel agents are back by Business Insider I’ve been hearing this anecdotally, but it’s interesting to see that younger travelers have brought back travel agents f ..read more