Stocks can go down? How quickly we forget. I am amazed to see investors get spooked every single time. Stocks typically selloff roughly 7-10% at least once a year. A few months later, we’ve forgotten the reason for the selloff because markets recover and move on to new highs. The graph below shows the largest…

In early March, with the stock market in free fall, my husband and I began discussing our investment plan. Even though it was a scary time, the stock market was on sale. With our long time horizon, we recognized a buying opportunity. He has nagged me for years about individual stock picks, but my stock…

I am visiting family in Alabama this week and enjoying daily hikes in the hilly woods near their home. Here among the red clay and pine trees, I am in my element. There is no place on Earth that I am not only from but of than central Alabama. I feel it when I arrive,…

Maybe you saw the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent economic devastation that it would cause. Maybe you knew the stock market would fall dramatically. Or perhaps you missed the initial selloff but sold stocks before the worst of the carnage in March. What a relief. You were sitting in cash while the market dropped 35%…

Close your eyes and imagine you are transported back to the end of December. I tell you that next year, a highly infectious and deadly, respiratory virus will break out in China. It will not be contained and will spread to every country in the world within a few months, infecting millions and killing hundreds…

As the coronavirus drags in to its third month, many are asking – how long will it last? How long will we be working from home? How long will schools be closed? How long until large events can resume? Waiting for something with an unknown end date is maddening. It might be easier to wait…

Almost everyone is suffering financially from the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Nonessential businesses across the country are shuttered. More than 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment claims over the past four weeks. Hotel rooms are empty as municipalities reliant on their taxes see holes blown in their budgets. Cuts to city services, furloughs, and layoffs…

If you were born 200 years ago, there is a good chance you would have succumbed to an infectious disease by now. When European explorers landed in the Americas, their foreign diseases wiped out entire civilizations. A pharmacy in the French Quarter of New Orleans placed yellow liquid in the bottles in the window to…

In August 1914, famed explorer Ernest Shackleton set sail for a record breaking attempt to travel across the continent of Antarctica. But his ship and crew were soon stranded in the polar sea, wedged between ice floes that would not part. As the days passed, the sun slowly set in the horizon. During the Antarctic…

If you have cash sitting on the sidelines, this is the moment you were waiting for. You watched it go up, and now you’ve watched it come down. If not now, when? Huge caveat, this is not a bottom of the market call. There are no models to quantify what happens when more than half…