Bob's Journal
Found 587 Articles.
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Bob’s Journal 7/10
Most 401(k) Plans Offer Underperforming Funds Most corporate 401(k) plans offer too many investment funds that charge high fees and underperform their peers, according to a study by Abernathy Daley 401(k) Consultants, a firm that administers 401(k) plans. The study examined the funds owned by 58,300 U.S. corporate plans. More than 99% of the plans […]
Bob’s Journal 7/3
Changes in Prior Approval Coming to Traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage There were two major announcements recently regarding prior approval of treatments and services for Medicare beneficiaries. Original Medicare hasn’t required prior authorization of treatments and services, with a few exceptions. For most care, providers and patients agree on a treatment. Then, the treatment paperwork for […]
Bob’s Journal 6/26
Social Security Retirement Trust Fund Continues Toward Insolvency The Social Security trust funds have $2.72 trillion in assets, but they’re likely to run out of money in less than 10 years, according to the 2025 annual report from the Trustees of Social Security and Medicare. The Social Security system has two trust funds. The major […]
Bob’s Journal 6/19
The Mega-Cap Stocks Are Breaking Up The stocks with the largest capitalizations were highly correlated with each other for a long time, but that hasn’t been the case in 2025. The stocks with capitalizations of more than one trillion dollars generally are known as mega-cap stocks. Currently, there are nine such stocks: Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia […]
Bob’s Journal 6/12
The Labor Market Weakens Most investors and analysts were optimistic about the economy after last week’s Employment Situation reports were released. But the details of the reports reveal the labor market is weakening. The reports said 139,000 new jobs were created in May. That beat consensus forecasts of 126,000 new jobs. But the numbers initially […]
Bob’s Journal 6/5
Are the Magnificent Seven Magnificent Again? The seven growth stocks that dominated stock returns in recent years, known as the Magnificent Seven, tumbled in early 2025. They fell especially hard after President Donald J. Trump began announcing tariffs. But they bounced back after most of the tariffs were delayed or reduced. Yet, the Magnificent Seven […]
Bob’s Journal 5/29
International Stocks Continue to Leap Ahead Many investors are heartened by how U.S. stock prices bounced higher each time higher tariffs were postponed or modified. But U.S. equities still are laggards this year. International equities started 2025 by surging ahead of U.S. counterparts, marking a small reversal in the exceptional performance of U.S stocks since […]
Bob’s Journal 5/22
The Costs of the United State’s Perpetual Deficits Increase The federal government no longer is a triple-A credit risk, according to all three prominent credit rating firms. Triple-A is the highest credit rating and implies debt issued by the debtor is as close to risk-free as possible. S&P Global Ratings downgraded U.S. debt from triple-A […]
