Author Archive: Ian L. Cooper

The average American can’t afford to retire.

At the moment, the median balance among those 65 and older is $58,035, according to CNBC.  Averaged over a 20-year period, that’s only $2,901.75 a year. Worse, the median private pension is $9,376.  Social security averaged just over $1,400 a month in 2018.

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone that can live on that.

What makes the situation far more difficult is the state of the stock market.

It’s not as if you can depend on your average stock anymore.

With the trade war escalating, it’s been a confusing time for investors.

Contradictory claims from both sides have given way to extreme optimism, and pure grief when all goes south. … Read more

Quite often, investors come into the market with the false perception that making money is a guarantee.

However, many learn the hard way that’s not often the case.

That’s because they come into the market without a game plan.

And as any investor will tell you, that’s a bad idea — especially in today’s volatile market.

In fact, with markets saturated with fear over the trade war, and with an inverted yield curve pointing to a recession, you must have a plan.  After all, if you fail to plan ahead, you plan to fail.

If you want to do well in a fear-based market, plan ahead like a billionaire.… Read more

With panicked investors in full retreat, we’re left with three ridiculously cheap opportunities that could outpace the market in coming months.

Best of all, the three of them offer respectable dividend yields, with one above 8%.

However, before we jump into them, let’s discuss why markets may be heading higher.

Fears of a Recession are Overblown

Growth forecasts are now rising, and the economy looks nowhere as bad as the bond market yields would have us believe.  For example, even with all of the chaos this summer, consumers have remained resilient– and they’re spending.

July 2019 retail sales jumped 0.7% month over month, for example.… Read more

Markets went off the rails this week, as the 10- and 2-year Treasury yields invert.

In fact, the 10-year Treasury bond yield just slipped to 1.627%, which was below the 1.632% yield on the 2-year.  That was the first time that’s happened since 2007.

Even the yield on the 30-year bond just fell to an all-time low of 2.02%, which was below its former record low of 2.0889%.

What’s nerve-wracking is that such a development in the 2/10 has occurred ahead of every U.S. recession over the last 50 years, sometimes leading by as much as 24 months, says Fox Business. … Read more