Good morning, money nerds! Welcome back. As always, Jim and I have culled our newsfeeds to find the most interesting and useful financial news to share with you. Have some suggestions of sites we should include in our searches? Drop us a line by email or reply in the comments to today’s post!
Here’s what we have for you today…
Five myths about women and investing. [Enterprising Investor] — “Women have longer life expectancies, and at this point, because of the gender pay gap, they have smaller nest eggs, so their financial needs are different. You can’t just pink it and shrink it. You can’t leave women out of a couple’s conversation and expect that they’re going to be happy!”
What’s the point of a trust? [Oblivious Investor] — The always-awesome Mike Piper answers a reader question: “Can you explain succinctly what the point of a trust is? I had thought that they were a tool for avoiding estate taxes (I don’t understand how that works, but it’s not a concern for me) but my accountant suggested I create one and I don’t really understand why.”
200 years of asset class returns. [A Wealth of Common Sense] — “You have to take any financial market data, call it pre-1950s or so, with a bucket of salt but I still think these numbers can be instructive when thinking about the very long-term for financial markets.” [I love this stuff!]
The world economy is suddenly running low in everything. [Bloomberg Businessweek] — “Shortages, transportation bottlenecks and price spikes are nearing the highest levels in recent memory, raising concern that a supercharged global economy will stoke inflation…The difference between the big crunch of 2021 and past supply disruptions is the sheer magnitude of it, and the fact that there is — as far as anyone can tell — no clear end in sight. Big or small, few businesses are spared.”
On a related note, here’s Wendover Production’s 20-minute video explaining why there are so many shortages right now.
I’ll be honest: The economy is scaring me. I’m not joking. Things are weird. Nothing is doing what it’s supposed to do. I know that much of this is pandemic-related, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it makes me feel worse. I’m hopeful that things will return to something close to normal within a year…but what if they don’t?
Okay, that’s a bummer of a way to end the day. Sorry! I’ll be back tomorrow, though, with some happy news to take you into the weekend. (Maybe.)