Social Security
Found 257 Articles.
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Another Reason to Ignore Stock Market Forecasts
Late each year and early the following year, the economists and analysts air out their forecasts for the coming year. Each year, almost all the stock market forecasts are for returns in the high single digits (8% to 10%). That’s the long-term average annualized return. The funny thing is, these forecasts are way off the […]
Estimating Future Stock Returns
A major debate among stock analysts these days is the level of future returns that is reasonable to expect. Some argue that despite high valuations and profit margins today other factors will allow stocks to appreciate near historic average levels for the coming 10 years or so. Others argue that future returns have been pulled […]
Some Fallacies of the S&P 500
This post notes that the S&P 500 wasn’t always capitalization weighted. Until 1988 it was structured much like the Dow Jones Industrial Average but with more companies. There are a lot of thoughts that can spring from that information. One of them is that index investing isn’t really passive investing. It’s true that most active […]
How the Fed Distorts the Stock Market, and Why You Should Beware
The Fed’s easy money and low interest rate policies might have saved the economy from severe depression since 2008. But it definitely has had other effects. One effect is to distort investment markets, especially the stock market. If you’ve been following headlines, you’ve seen that few active mutual fund managers have beaten the stock indexes […]
Perhaps the Most Important Investment Issue
Growth and productivity boomed since 1982 and really going back longer. This contributed to the boom in earnings and stock prices. Is that going to continue? This post for Philosophical Economics presents the history of the profit margin boom, attributing it primarily to technology and finance. He then presents both a bullish case (that the […]
Stability in the Investment World
Ben Hunt manages money for institutional investor and writes a blog and other things intended primarily for institutional investors and hedge funds. Hunt’s latest essay explains how the novel Catch-22 relates to today’s investment world. It’s a bit wide-ranging but interesting and worth reading. Basically, Hunt believes investment markets are stable for now and for […]
Are Stock Values High or Low?
It is a rare time when analysts aren’t debating whether stock valuations are high, low, or somewhere in between. The debate matters, because stock indexes peak when valuations are high and bottom when valuations are low. But valuation isn’t like an on/off switch. Stocks can be highly valued or low valued for a long time […]
Social Security Underpays Beneficiaries
About 450,000 beneficiaries were underpaid $500 million since 2008 by Social Security, according to an Inspector General audit. More than 85% of those beneficiaries were identified in a 2008 audit, but the SSA didn’t take corrective action. These were not errors discovered by beneficiaries but are errors uncovered by SSA’s internal system. But the systems […]
