Published May 2022 Inflation, and specifically stagflation, makes investing more challenging. Stagflation is when inflation is high, but growth is low or negative. Cash and bonds are obviously a rough place to be, because their yields are often below the level of inflation in an inflationary environment. A bond is a promise to pay a … [Read more...]

Originally Published: February 2020, Updated May 2020 U.S. Treasury bonds (and bills and notes) are often thought of as risk-free investments. This is true in a sense; the U.S. Treasury has always fully paid back its debts in dollar-denominated nominal terms. However, what many investors miss is the fact that the purchasing power of those … [Read more...]

The investment platform that I recommend to most people is M1 Finance, and this article describes in detail why I think it's so good. In short, it's commission-free and has a very powerful interface for managing position sizes, seamlessly blending ETFs and individual stocks, re-balancing for tactical asset allocation, and building custom … [Read more...]

There are all sorts of ratios and metrics that investors can use to determine whether a stock is undervalued relative to the investment returns it is expected to produce. The most commonly-used one by far is the price-to-earnings ratio, often referred to as the P/E ratio. This article takes a look at the popular P/E ratio, how it's … [Read more...]

The most common concern readers express to me in my inbox is that they want to figure out how to prepare for the possibility of a stock market crash or prolonged bear market. It's a reasonable concern, given how the United States has enjoyed 9 continuous years of economic expansion, we have significant government deficits, and the stock market … [Read more...]