The first quarter of 2020 was a pretty rough one. The S&P 500 ended the quarter down 20.0% (down 19.6% on a total return basis, including dividends) – the worst quarterly return since the fourth quarter of 2008. As everyone knows by now, this was all due to the coronavirus and the toll of this… Read More

“Progress is invisible to most people because they don’t get their understanding of the world from numbers; they get it from headlines. Journalism by its very nature conceals progress, because it presents sudden events rather than gradual trends. Most things that happen suddenly are bad: a war, a shooting, an epidemic, a scandal, a financial… Read More

2019’s third quarter was another wild one in terms of volatility in the markets. July gave us a promising start as US stock markets set new all-time highs early in the month. August was less favorable to the US investor. It started with escalated trade war rhetoric between President Trump and China, and then the… Read More

All in all, the second quarter turned out to be a good one for stocks. The S&P 500 was up 4.3% on a total return basis (including dividends), but it wasn’t easy getting there. The index initially continued its first quarter run higher, eventually setting a new high on May 3rd thanks to a first… Read More

Dalbar, a firm that has been analyzing investor returns based on cash flow data from mutual funds since 1994, recently reported that the average investor lost twice as much as the S&P 500 in 2018. Their latest Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior report estimated that the average investor lost 9.4% during the full year. This… Read More