Which Party Is Better For Stock Market Returns: Democrats or Republicans?

Which Party Is Better For Stock Market Returns: Democrats or Republicans?

Conventional wisdom has it that Republicans are friendlier to Wall Street than Democrats.  One might assume, therefore, that when a Republican is in the White House, stock market performance would be better than during a Democratic administration.  An interesting 2003 academic research paper by Pedro Santa-Clara and Rossen Valkanov at UCLA’s Anderson School of Business…
Read more

Is GDP Growth A Good Predictor Of Stock Market Performance?

Conventional wisdom among investors today is that emerging markets represent a potentially lucrative opportunity for equity growth as compared to developed markets.  The argument is that, because they did not participate in the excessive debt binge of the 1990s and 2000s, emerging market economies are poised to grow faster than those of developed countries like…
Read more

Forgot About That Pension From a Long-Lost Employer?

These days it’s not uncommon for a worker to spend his or her career at half a dozen or more companies before retiring. It’s also not uncommon for companies themselves to go through numerous mergers and ownership changes. The odds of record-keeping errors also grow as companies change hands. It’s generally easy to keep track…
Read more

Retirees Now Get Less From Social Security Than They Put In

A report by the Urban Institute finds that people retiring today represent the first generation of workers that have paid more in Social Security taxes during their careers than they will receive in benefits after they retire.  And this historic shift is expected to get worse for future retirees. When Social Security was first enacted…
Read more

Studies Show Age Affects Financial Decision Making

Cognitive impairment in old age may not simply be the result of a random event such as Alzheimer’s or a stroke. There is increasing evidence that cognitive decline in old age is natural and inevitable, and cannot be slowed by education or intelligence, nor by so-called brain exercises such as solving crossword puzzles. Our brain,…
Read more

Cash Balance Retirement Plans Are Becoming Popular Alternatives To Pensions

Kravitz, a national designer and administrator of corporate retirement plans, recently released their 2012 National Cash Balance Research Report, which indicates that cash balance plans continue to grow much faster than all other types of retirement plans.  In 2010 (the most recent year for which IRS reporting data is available), the number of new cash…
Read more