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What The Stock Market Wants This Election, And What You Should Do In Your Portfolio

westloop — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 09:00:30 +0000

We’ll know soon enough who America chooses as its next president, but the market has already voted.

Who does the stock market “want” to win?

Hillary Clinton. This isn’t a partisan statement, but simply a statement of fact. There may be several indicators to which we could point, but the glaring one is this: When the FBI announced last Friday that a new slew of emails had been discovered that could impact its investigation and shed further negative light on Clinton’s handling of classified emails, the market sold off. Period.

Read the rest of the article on Forbes.

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How Your Own Biases Are Hurting Your Portfolio

westloop — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 09:00:50 +0000

You’re no fool. But let’s imagine for a second that a major public figure said something—something false—over and over (and over) again. Regardless of its questionable veracity, is there a chance you’d be more likely to believe the proclamation simply because you’ve heard it often and recently?

Like it or not, the answer is an emphatic “Yes.”

Read the rest of the article on Forbes.

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Danica Patrick: You May Not Drive A Racecar, But You Still Need Life Insurance

westloop — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 09:00:35 +0000

Since her early 20s, Danica Patrick has driven a racecar for a living, speeding 200 miles per hour around a crowded track bordered by concrete walls. It’s dangerous. Really dangerous. And she recognizes that.

“There are things that happen in the car that you can’t plan for and that are out of your control, like a tire blowing on you or an engine blowing up or a crash that happens in front of you or someone hits you,” Patrick told me in a recent interview. “So no matter what your skillset is, those things just happen. Absolutely it is a risk.”

Read the rest of the article on Forbes.

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What A 12-Year-Old Ukulele Player Teaches Us About Authenticity In Our Work

westloop — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 09:00:41 +0000

What vocational lessons could we possibly learn from the 12-year-old viral sensation who just won America’s Got Talent?

I don’t watch reality television contests, because as a rule, the best participants rarely participate and when they do, they almost never win. But quite randomly, a 12-year-old ukulele player named Grace VanderWaal, inspired me to break my own boycott.

On our way to another channel, my family stumbled on America’s Got Talent a few months ago just in time to see one of my favorite instruments—the ukulele—adorning the neck of a diminutive blond girl.

Read the rest of the article on Forbes.

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Don’t Let Wall Street Fool You Into Taking Too Much Risk

westloop — Mon, 05 Sep 2016 09:00:03 +0000

Competition for your dollars creates an inertia that always seems to lead Wall Street down the path of unhelpfully increasing the risk in your portfolio. The recent Wall Street Journal headline, “Bond Funds Turn Up Risk,” illustrates an especially alarming trend. Specifically, of increasing the risk in the part of your portfolio that should be reducing overall risk—bonds.

Bonds are supposed to be boring. The primary role they serve in our portfolios is not necessarily to make money, but to dampen the volatility that is an inevitable byproduct of the real moneymakers—stocks.

Read the rest of the article on Forbes.

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It’s A Good Thing Investing Isn’t Like the Olympics

westloop — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 09:00:54 +0000

Imagine that your entire life revolves around a single performance lasting less than 14 seconds. You’ve sacrificed your youth, close friendships and any semblance of a career in pursuit of validating your Herculean effort on the world’s largest stage. The hopes of your country on your shoulders. Tens of millions of gawkers eager to praise perfection — and condemn anything less.

And then.

You dork it.

Read the rest of the article on Forbes.

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2016’s ‘Best City In The World’ Goes To…

westloop — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 09:00:18 +0000

Charleston, South Carolina. According to Travel + Leisure magazine, “Charleston is a remarkably dynamic place, so it’s no surprise that it has achieved its highest ranking ever in our survey as the year’s best city in the world.”

It’s the first time a U.S. city has received the top honor, but Charleston ranked No. 2 last year and has been ranked the No. 1 city in the U.S. and Canada for four years running. As scored by Travel + Leisure readers, Charleston received its top-ranked status based on six categories: sights/landmarks, culture/arts, restaurants/food, people/friendliness, shopping and value.

Read the rest of the article on Forbes.

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You Can’t Do Anything You Want

westloop — Mon, 02 May 2016 09:00:45 +0000

“A lot of career advice begins right back at age six,” writes author Chris Guillebeau in his newest book, Born for This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do. But in case you’re expecting some fluffy self-help propaganda that over-inflates your ego in an attempt to win your purchase of the book, Guillebeau hits you with a helpful dose of reality early and often:

“‘You can do anything you want,’ adults usually promise, without any explanation or assurance of how ‘anything’ is possible. Nice as it might sound to our young ears, this advice is absurd,” says Guillebeau.

Read the rest of the article on Forbes.

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The Millennial Guide To Managing Risk With Insurance

westloop — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 09:00:45 +0000

“I’m too [fill in the blank] to worry about insurance.” If you’re a millennial, there are plenty of words you could choose from to complete that sentence. Perhaps “young,” “poor,” “busy” and “skeptical” are good ones (for starters).

You might have enough insurance. You might even have too much. But I’d bet you don’t have as much as you need in some categories, too. Regardless, ignorance is neither blissful nor beneficial at any age, so let’s ask and answer the questions below, reviewing the most prominent types of insurance that may—or may not—be important for you to consider.

Read the rest of the article on Forbes.

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Are You Living The Life You Chose?

westloop — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 09:00:11 +0000

I love finding financial wisdom in unlikely places, like in art and music. These opportunities are more abundant than you might expect. For instance, the punk-Americana outfit, The Avett Brothers, dedicated an entire tune, aptly titled “Ill With Want,” to the scourge of greed and Mumford & Sons taught us that “where you invest your love, you invest your life.”

The newest melodic metaphor to catch my ear comes from singer-songwriter Jason Isbell. He expresses his appreciation for having work in the title track of his newest album, “Something More Than Free,” but it’s the pair of questions he poses in another song, “The Life You Chose,” that really got me thinking.

Read the rest of the article on Forbes.

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