Teach Your Children Well - 10 Steps to Financial Education Teaching your children to be financially responsible is one of life’s critical lessons. As your children mature, you will have many opportunities to teach them about good financial management, from kindergarten to adulthood. Financial Education in the Early years STEP 1. Shop with your young [...]
Tips on Understanding Your Credit Report, and Fixing Any Errors You May Find Following are six of the key items that appear on a credit report, with tips on how to fix any errors you may find: Personal information - Is your name, Social Security number, address and other personal information accurate? If not, contact [...]
Now that we have your attention with that eye-grabbing title, there’s definitely something to the idea that stocks perform better the year after a sitting president wins reelection. “Think about it—usually when a president wins reelection, it means the economy is going pretty strong, so stocks tend to do well,” explained LPL Financial Chief Market [...]
Stimulus talks in Washington, DC, are getting a lot of attention from investors—and for good reason. The midpoint of the two offers—roughly $1.6 trillion from the White House and $2.2 trillion from US House Democrats—is about 9% of last year’s US gross domestic product (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics). That’s a big deal in terms [...]
US and International Equities The S&P 500 Index gave back some gains in September after a strong five-month run, with most sectors finishing in the red. The utilities and materials sectors were the exceptions, both gaining for the month. The sectors with the largest pullbacks this past month were energy, communication services, information technology, and [...]
In order to prepare for the appointment with the financial advisor here's how to prepare. To properly prepare for your meeting, you should get organized in 2 categories: Questions Current statements Let's start with “Questions” first There are questions for you to consider and your questions for the financial advisor. Questions For You Organize your [...]
Confidence is on the rise. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index jumped to 101.8 from August’s 86.3, beating estimates by the most since November 2011 and delivering the largest month-over-month increase since April 2003. Not surprisingly, the majority of the previous largest monthly increases occurred at the end of a recession or beginning of a new expansion. [...]
An old Wall Street adage says bond markets are smarter than equity markets, so when stocks encounter volatility, investors often look to the bond market for clues about the potential severity of equity market weakness. The option-adjusted spread (OAS), a key data point, adjusts a bond’s yield for any unique features of the bond in [...]
We check in again today on some of the real-time economic data that LPL Research is monitoring to provide timely and valuable insights into the state of the US economy. Traditional economic data is often reported too slowly to pick up the changes that are occurring in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest data [...]
While the direction of the 10-year Treasury yield over the last cycle was decidedly lower, as shown in LPL’s Chart of the Day, there were still six extended periods where it rose at least 0.75%, and in two of those it rose almost 2%. Looking ahead, economic growth below potential, slack in the labor market, [...]
