As we head into the final weekend of July, here’s our weekly collection of interesting reads on investing, personal finance, and stewardship.
Enjoy!
Millennials err on the side of caution when it comes to investing (Bloomberg via Investment News). "This generation was scared out of the stock market during the financial crisis," says one observer. The cover article in our new August issue, The Millennial Investing Crisis, is on this very topic.
Facebook’s $100 billion-plus rout is the biggest loss in stock market history (CNBC). The bigger they are...
G.D.P. grew at 4.1% rate in latest quarter. Here’s what that means. (New York Times). This the first time since 2014 that economic growth has topped 4% in a quarter. (But keep in mind that the figure is preliminary and could change as new data become available.)
TD Ameritrade latest brokerage refusing to lead in cutting ETF commissions (Investment News, via Google). TDA, like Schwab, isn’t rushing to offer more free ETFs, despite Vanguard’s recent move making nearly 1,800 ETFs commission-free.
Venezuela has inflation fix: dropping zeros from currency (The Washington Post via The Mercury News). Rhetorical question: When is a fix not a fix?
And from the bloggers and pundits...
They all fall down (Michael Batnick, Irrelevant Investor). The Facebook swoon is a needed reminder that double-digit declines are sometimes the cost of doing business.
U.S. stock market breadth strengthening (Bespoke). Lagging cyclical sectors are showing signs of life and 73% of S&P 500 stocks are now above their 50-day moving averages. That seems encouraging.
10 money revelations from being a parent (Ben Carlson, A Wealth of Common Sense). Some insightful stuff here, including: "[H]aving kids forces you to prioritize your spending habits. You don’t have nearly as much time to worry about yourself (which is actually kind of liberating)."
Housing costs reduce the return to education (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution). This short post from an economics professor at George Mason University makes an interesting point: "To earn high wages college-educated workers must increasingly live in expensive cities. One consequence is that the net college wage premium [i.e., additional salary based on level of educational attainment] is not as large as it appears." In other words, higher income but also higher outgo.
I received a ransom email (and this is what I did) (Bob Lotich, SeedTime). I got a ransom email this week too — actually, four of them, all with the same stolen password. Scary. (Related: Our June 2017 article, Protecting Your Financial Assets by Stepping Up Your Cybersecurity.)
Have a comment? "Join the Discussion" below.
