Category: Investing
Not long ago, I participated in a conversation on NetworthIQ: “Struggling with breaking the first million mark“. The question posed was about mental focus and persistence needed to get to that magical $1 million mark. However, it got me thinking about the mathematical aspect of it.
As you can see from the chart, if a person [...]
In my post about beating the S&P 500, I mentioned regular contributions as a factor that helped me. Over the weekend, I examined precisely how regular contributions helped. This led me to the subject of Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA), which until recently I thought was the same as regular contributions. They are [...]
In “Beating the S&P 500, part 1,” I showed you my my investment performance that beaten the S&P 500. In this post, I will show you another way to look at these numbers and reveal how I managed the feat.
Here is a different look at the numbers
The following table shows how $10,000 invested in my [...]
You may have heard the phrase “beat the market. ” In this case, the market usually refers to the S&P 500 index. There are other U.S. indices such as, DJIA, NASDAQ 100, NASDAQ Composite, Russell 2000, Wilshire 5000, and many other domestic and international ones. However, the S&P 500 is by far the most used [...]
On books, web sites, and blogs (including this one) you may have come across references such as the S&P 500 has grown 13% annually for the past 30 years or something to that effect. You may wonder what that means and where did they get that number.
When someone states an annualized return, most likely [...]
The other day I was watching the news and saw that Tiger Woods just won his 13th major title — that is nothing short of phenomenal. Then my mind drifted back to personal finance issues and it dawned on me that mastering golf is similar to mastering the art of investing. Here are [...]
I have been investing in the stock market for nearly 10 years and acquired quite a bit of experience and knowledge (mainly through making mistakes). I’ve never codified on to a piece of paper until today. Before I begin, I want to give credit where it is due. This post was inspired by CommodityWorld.com’s Common [...]
In the past few days, there were a lot of gloom and doom talk about the stock market that closed 13,265.47 on Friday, July 27 off the record high of 14,000.41 sets on Thursday, July 19 — a 9.47% drop in 6 days.
If you are new to investing, or just invest for the short-term, this [...]
In the post Impact Of High Expense Ratio On Investment Performance, I showed you how investing in mutual funds with high expense ratio can cost you 50% of your potential gain. With this in mind, I went back to review my IRA portfolio and found a fund that charges 1.23% (above my 1.0% maximum tolerance). [...]
What is an expense ratio? It is a fee that mutual fund companies subtract from your investments each year for their services. Can that small fee have such a big impact? Yes, it’s possible for high expense ratio to eat up 50% of your gain — given enough time, high expense ratio [...]
