One of the regular data points that makes financial news headlines is the unemployment rate, that is, how many people lack jobs in the economy. But what is unemployment exactly? … Read more →

Tracking error is the gap between how a mutual fund, exchange-traded fund (ETF) or index fund performs compared to a benchmark index. When investors buy a fund they usually understand … Read more →

Every three months all of Wall Street seems to be frozen in place, awaiting the coming wave of corporate earnings. Stocks often stand still until the numbers come out, then … Read more →

The single most important question on most investor’s minds is a simple one: Will things get worse? The honest answer is that nobody knows. Yet how far the stock market … Read more →

Even if you haven’t been paying close attention to the investment world you’ve probably recently heard the term “quantitative easing” or QE. In simple terms, QE is a way for … Read more →

Stocks go up, usually for long stretches of time. Sometimes they fall. Typically, investors can simply wait out the downturns, but not always. Life intervenes: A surprise medical bill, a … Read more →

Stocks are priced by traders all day, every day that the markets are open. Presumably, at any given moment, the price set by those many trades is accurate by definition. … Read more →

Jeremy Siegel, the Wharton professor most famous for writing the investment classic Stocks for the Long Run, recently claimed the following: “We believe that the old 60/40 model just won’t … Read more →

Investors put money to work with an eye toward making money, called return on capital. But there’s another kind of return, called return of capital. The difference is important because … Read more →

A presidential impeachment. A virus running wild in China. An election year in full swing. Now is the time to get out of stocks, right? If only it were that … Read more →