Posts with keyword S&P 500→

I don’t know about the smartest, but at less than 180 pages this is certainly the smallest investing book I have ever read. The bargain price of $4.97 was worth it though. (The size falls below the minimum 200-page limit I follow when paying $5 for any book on investing, but that is okay, as long as quality compensates for the lack of quantity.)
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In the recent annual meeting of the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders held last Saturday, CEO Warren Buffett was asked about the best investment idea he would recommend to an investor in his 30′s. In his own words:

I would just have it all in a very low-cost index fund from a reputable firm, maybe Vanguard. Unless I bought during a strong bull market, I would feel confident that I would outperform…and I could just go back and get on with my work.

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In Part I, I discussed the two main and opposing theories of investing – efficient market theory (EMT) and fundamental analysis (FA). Here I talk about which one of these two can be thought as “correct”.
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A scientist colleague of mine, a quiet 52-year old fellow with mind sharp as a tack in most earthly matters, has become caught up in the same affliction that many of us get in these uncertain financial times. He wanted to time the market, to make most of the up-down-up cycles of the ongoing fluctuations.
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Wall Street saw a brutal sell-off today, with the major market indexes – Dow Jones, S&P 500 and NASDAQ – dropping respectively 2.64% (367 points), 2.56% (39 points) and 2.65% (74 points). The slide reflects, among other things, a continued concern about credit and housing issues, rising oil prices, falling dollar value, and uncertainly on Fed’s next move.
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US stock market has just closed for the day with all major indexes again taking big dives: Dow Index is down by 387 points (a single-day 2.9% drop, 2^nd worst of this year), S&P 500 down 44 points (3% drop), and NASDAQ down 57 points (2.2%). In the rest of the world, London’s FTSE Index was down 1.9%, Tokyo’s Nikkei up 0.8%, India’s SENSEX down 1.4%, and Australia’s ASX up 1.1%. These are the times when many investors begin to ask if they should jack up their stock holding in foreign markets. After all, the domestic and foreign markets rarely move in lockstep, and having a chunk of my asset allocated to foreign stocks should minimize any impact of a major domestic slump.
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If we look at the data for a broad stock market index, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average or S&P 500 Index, three things jump out of the page. The first one is good news – there is a strong upward trend in market movement over the entire recorded history. This means that holding onto a diversified portfolio should fetch significant gain over long term – a popular retirement strategy for many who still have several years left before hanging up their boots.
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Last week ended with the second major stock market slump of this year that has barely gone through its first half. After a turbo-charged run over the last 5 months (since the first slump of ’07), during which Dow Jones Index rose 2000 points to cross 14000 for the first time on July 19, it dropped 700 points in the space of only 7 days since then (see picture). All the other major US market indexes also moved in a similar way, as expected (here is S&P500 Index). Someone in Wall Street made a comment that the bull run has finally ended, even though the bull market is still on. Go figure!

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