Category: Finance

Mid-cap stocks fly under the radar, wedged between fast-growing small-caps and established large-caps. But their long-term performance as an asset class has been good enough that you should think about diversifying your investment portfolio to include them. Financial media headlines are rightly fixated on the large-cap companies that drive the stock market. After all, the largest exchange traded fund (ETF) — the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, +0.03%  — has $279 billion in assets and there are other giant ETFs and index mutual funds that track the S&P 500 SPX, +0.04% So even with the…

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U.S. retail sales last month rose an unexpectedly strong 1.6 percent. That and better-than-expected corporate earnings results helped the stock market post modest gains today. The Dow and S&P 500 indexes were up 0.42 percent and 0.16 percent respectively while the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.02 percent. The Entrepreneur Index™ closed the day with a gain of 0.18 percent. Returns were muted on the index today. TripAdvisor Inc.had the biggest gain, rising 1.83 percent. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, on a week-long slide, had the biggest loss, falling 2.81 percent. Diversified manufacturer Danaher beat both revenue and earnings…

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Remember the rule-of-thumb that “you need a million dollars to retire?” Because the education system fails to teach young adults the importance of finance, this rule is actually still referenced by some millennials today. However, if you’re between 20 and 40 years old but think a million bucks will support you in retirement, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. It’s reality check time. A bag of groceries that cost $100 in 1980 costs you $320 today. That’s the power of inflation, and it’s not going away anytime soon. As the cost of living…

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Drug-makers, hospital managers and health insurers were all down big largely because of a warning issued by UnitedHealth CEO David Wichmann in an earnings conference call yesterday. The leader of the nation’s biggest health insurer suggested that the Medicare-for-all proposals being made by Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and other Democrats could cause “wholesale disruption of American healthcare” and have “a severe impact on the economy and jobs.” Wichmann’s comments spooked investors. UnitedHealth’s stock and virtually every other healthcare stock fell dramatically in the last two days, as investors consider that…

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Good earnings from J.P. Morgan, the country’s biggest bank, a new streaming service from media giant Walt Disney Co., and a big acquisition in the energy sector all lifted stock prices. The Dow index, the laggard of the three major indexes this year with a return of 13.2 percent, was up 1.03 percent, led by J.P Morgan and Disney. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes were up 0.66 percent and 0.46 percent respectively. The Entrepreneur Index™ closed the day with a gain of 0.19 percent. The announcement of a $33 billion…

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