Here's our just three-weeks-until-Christmas Roundup of interesting articles on investing, personal finance, and stewardship.
Grab a mug of hot cocoa and read on!
- The 'everything rally': vaccines prompt wave of market exuberance (Financial Times via The Finance Info). Whether the exuberance is rational remains to be seen.
- ETF flows smash record (Morningstar). This article notes that by one measure of market performance, November was "the best month for global stock markets in at least 20 years."
- Biden names a liberal economic team with the pandemic threatening workers (AP via Time). But "they are intellectual liberals...not burn-it-all-down socialists," says one observer.
- CFOs feel confident Biden won't be able to raise the corporate tax rate to 28%: Survey (CNBC). The presumptive president-elect wants a tax increase, but with Republican gains in the House and (as yet) no significant Democratic gains in the Senate, he likely would be stymied by Congress.
- Pelosi and McConnell resume talks as Congress rushes to strike a COVID stimulus deal (CNBC). "Compromise is within reach.... We can do this," says Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
- When bad taxes happen to good funds (Morningstar). Gains distributed to investors in taxable accounts can create significant end-of-year tax bills. Here are examples.
- How I invest my own money (Ben Carlson, A Wealth of Common Sense). The last line of this one is a keeper: "[I invest] like the glass is half full but [save] like the glass is half empty." Words to live by.
- Lessons from coin-flipping gurus (Jon Petersen, Novel Investor). Something with the worst odds of success will pay off every now and then. But that isn't the same as having a reasonable strategy and a long-term perspective.
- The reasonable optimist (Morgan Housel, Collaborative Fund Blog). The "reasonable optimist" expects the world to break all the time. But he knows the long-term trend is favorable.
- Ain't everything (Jonathan Clements, Humble Dollar). Ensuring that money has the right importance in your life — and no more.
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