Last year I wrote about the progress being made on the Bitcoin investment front (https://www.cognizantwealth.com/2023/07/07/is-bitcoin-almost-ready-for-prime-time/).  At the time there were only two ways to invest in Bitcoin: through a private exchange or via an ETF holding Bitcoin futures. Last week the SEC authorized eleven spot (current price) Bitcoin ETFs to begin trading. Is this the…
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Although inflation has been mitigated over the last couple of years, it’s still on the minds of many investors. Should we avoid stocks when inflation is high? Can inflation be used for market timing in some way? Unfortunately the answer is “no” in both cases. There is no demonstrable connection between periods of high inflation…
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Investing involves volatility. The higher the expected return, the greater the volatility. This is axiomatic. You can’t avoid it but you can mitigate it, as I wrote in a previous column. And it turns out that reducing volatility has a number of benefits for investors. First, there’s what’s known as volatility drag. This is a…
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That doesn’t sound right, does it? Who would ever want to underperform the stock market? Shouldn’t the goal be to consistently beat the market? That would be great, but how easy is it to do? S&P Global produces an annual report called SPIVA (https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/spiva/spiva-us-mid-year-2023.pdf) which compares how actively managed funds – those that attempt to…
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