Tax Refunds Were Lower in 2018. So What?

Tax Refunds Were Lower in 2018. So What?

Just a heads up that this is going to be another media rant. But not the typical kind in which I take issue with the media spending less time on reporting facts than on speculating about them. This time it’s about taxpayers getting $6 billion less in refunds from their 2018 tax returns than they…
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Why Don’t Millennials Like Stocks?

I previously posted about a Bankrate financial security survey in 2017 which found that real estate was the Millennial Generation’s top investment preference over stocks and cash (https://www.cognizantwealth.com/2017/11/24/is-real-estate-best-for-building-wealth/). The post pointed out that real estate as an investment had actually underperformed stocks over many periods since 1900, suggesting that millennials’ expectations of the best long-term…
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Latest Top Scams Targeting Seniors

The U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging recently released their 2018 report on the top ten scams targeted to seniors as reported to their toll-free fraud hotline 1-855-303-9470. With today’s technology it is not only easy for criminals and cheats to reach millions of citizens but also easy to misrepresent themselves and their organizations. While…
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What To Do About Record High Trade Deficits?

The U.S. Commerce Department reported this month that the trade deficit for 2018 reached a record $891.3 billion and grew by almost 13% over 2017. As investors, what should we be taking away from this metric? The first question might be how did we get to this point? President Trump assured us one year ago…
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Your Biggest Investment Risk

You may be familiar with the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where leaders from around the world meet to discuss the most pressing issues facing our collective societies. The WEF produces a Global Risks Report summarizing the results, based not only on the discussions at the meeting but also on feedback…
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Trump & The Stock Market Part 2

Following up from last week’s post, a reader wrote that it would be more realistic to compare how the broader stock market performed under Trump than under previous presidents. Frankly, I don’t see the value of this exercise. As I stated in my last post, I believe that at best a president can only indirectly…
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