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Buffett’s advice
Warren Buffett has some investing advice all of us can learn from—even for those who don’t own any Apple stock—a stock he currently loves.
Three tidbits outlined in a recent CNBC.com story include:
- Circle of competence. Basically this means understanding and knowing if the business you are buying is making money and that you feel confident that money-making will be sustainable going forward.
- Piece of a business. Buffett was influenced big time by Ben Graham’s classic book “The Intelligent Investor”. Read it.
- Margin of safety. Buffett likes value and when looking at purchasing a company “he wants the value at his entry price to be much lower than his value estimate for the company”. That spread difference is what he calls the “margin of safety”.
Why listen to Buffett’s advice? Guess it’s because from 1965 to 2017, Berkshire Hathaway’s stock’s annual return was 20.9% compared to that of the S&Ps 9.9%.
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Market Quick Glance
The Russell 2000 and NASDAQ were the indices that scored the most on the upside of things last week.
And one more time: It’s been since January when, at that time, new all-time highs were reached on three of the four indices followed below: The DJIA, the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000. NASDAQ hit its last new high in March.
Below are the weekly and 1-year index performance results for four major indices— including the dates each reached new highs—according to CNBC.com based on prices at the close of business on Friday, May 4, 2018.
–DJIA -1.85% YTD down more than the previous week’s -1.65%
- 1 yr Rtn 15.80% down a hair from the previous week’s 15.87%
Most recent DJIA all-time high was reached on January 26, 2018 of 26,616.71. The previous high was reached January 18, 2018 was 26,153.42.
-S&P 500 -0.38% YTD down more than last week’s -0.14%
- 1 yr Rtn 11.46% down from last week’s 11.77%
The S&P 500 reached its most recent all-time high on January 26, 2018 of 2,872.87. The previous high was reached on January 19, 2018 of 2810.33.
-NASDAQ 4.44% YTD up from last week’s 3.13%
- 1yr Rtn 18.67% up from last week’s 17.70%
Nasdaq reached a brand new all-time high on March 13, 2018 of 7,637.27. The previous high was reached on March 9, 2018 of 7,560.81.
-Russell 2000 1.96% YTD up from than last week’s 1.35%
- 1yr Rtn 12.73% up from last week’s 9.82%
The Russell 2000 reached an all-time high on January 24, of 1,615.52. The previous high was reached on January 16, 2018 of 1,604.02.
-Mutual funds
The average fund that falls under the broad U.S. Diversified Equity Funds heading had a year-to-date return of -0.53% at the close of business on Thursday, May 3, 2018, according to Lipper. That’s a fall from the previous week’s 0.65% average.
Small-Cap Growth funds ended the week with an average y-t-d return of 4.10% —down from the previous week’s 6.27%
Then again, Dedicated Short Bias Funds’ averagre returns had improved and were down only -4.25% instead of -5.43% from the previous week.
Visit www.allaboutfunds.com for more information about how various equity and fixed-income funds have rewarded investors over the short-and long-term, based upon Lipper data. Short-term meaning weekly and monthly performance returns; longer-term includes quarterly, year-to-date, 1-yr, 2-yr, 3-yr and 5-yr returns.
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Not running out of money
Well here’s some could be good news for retirees who don’t have $1 million or more bucks saved in their retirement accounts.
According to a Reuters piece by Gail Marks Jarvis, “The myth of outliving your retirement savings”, folks with less than $500,000 in savings on average spend “just about a quarter of it during the first 20 years of retirement.”
That data is from a study by Sudipto Banerjee of the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
Huh. Not sure I believe that but if it’s true, wouldn’t that be nice to know.
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