Author Archives: David John Marotta

This is the financial shock of a trip to hospital. It is upsetting, expensive, and unexpected.

Identical firms answer questions like these differently making the resulting data meaningless and useless. If anyone wants to use this data, the SEC will need to standardize answers first. If no one wants to use this data, we should eliminate the burden of providing it.

This 2008 article has wisdom for our current downturn, “As a response to the recent market correction, you can enrich your life in three healthy ways: Cut back your spending, increase your savings, and give more generously to charities of your choice.”

At stake is if the SEC is allowed to redefine what the phrase “best interest” means to make it mean something less than your actual real-world best interests.

On Tuesday, May 12, 2020, David John Marotta appeared on Radio 1070 WINA’s Schilling Show with Rob Schilling to refute the hypocrisy of taking a tax credit while opposing the legislation.

Should investors get out of the markets during an election year?

Dare to be dull. When you rebalance instead of following the crowd, you set yourself up for greater expected returns and are the definition of being a contrarian.

Already the COVID-19 predictions have started to come in. Do not be deceived by them. Do not be afraid of them.

Oddly, this technique might involve selling a bond position in the taxable account for a small capital gain, and buying that exact same position in an IRA in order to keep the portfolio in balance.

When I was really young, I did not realize that food had a season. What a privilege of our modern era!

Gold is extremely volatile and still doesn’t do much more than vaguely keep up with inflation. You can do better.

This 2015 article details one of the most brilliant breakthroughs in all of food science and how it relates to almost every aspect of life.

We strive to provide the necessary resources for anyone to prepare their own investment plan and meet their financial objectives for free on our blog, but we offer more services than that to our clients.

Diversification means always having something to complain about. Recently, it has been energy.

We would suggest not listening to Dent’s commentary.

It is common for investors to be surprised by movements in their portfolios, but it is harder to determine if these movements mean that anything should be done.

If you want to do something, rebalance.

Sometimes, you don’t get a second chance to be brave.

In 2013, we went whitewater rafting on the American River in California. Our guide’s speech inspired this powerful thought piece about disaster recovery that has a message for today.

Think we’re headed to another financial crash? Take a minute to learn from our last one.

Diversification is important. Diversification did not eliminate losses, but it did lose less and recover more quickly.

This 2016 post has recently been our most popular search result recently for good reason. After the 2020 COVID bear market, this article is a comforting bit of math.

This disappointment with good stock market returns explains their need to criticize stock buybacks.

You don’t have to time the market to make money in the market. In fact, timing the market is usually a losers game as the market often pushes your emotions to do exactly the wrong thing.

A recovery after a significant downturn in the markets is often market by steep growth.

“Sell the bounce” is never a good strategy because of the first word.

Market returns are out of your control. These thirteen actions are in your control.

In retrospect, it is clear that it was a good time to rebalance your portfolio, selling some of the bonds that you were so glad you had and buying more of the very stocks you were so worried about.

There are two critically important investment principles during retirement: 1) Stay calm and 2) Rebalance.

For many investors glued to the news, the global outlook appears to be perilous with no prospects of growth for the world economy.

As the stock market trends upward, this dip in market prices can be perceived as stocks being discounted and is likely a great time to buy low.

Only recently has Main Street been so fully invested. This 2007 article chronicles how it all got started.

Don’t let your political emotions cause you to be fearful about the economy. Those misplaced fears may impoverish your financial well-being.

There are at least four different capital gains tax rates. This 2017 article has how to minimize your tax owed at each one.

The class will be held March 19 through April 2, 2020 each Thursday from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM at Homewood Suites in the Albemarle Room.

We do not try to time the markets and instead we believe it is always a good time to have a balanced portfolio.

In 2019, several custodians switched to have no transaction fees for exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

The space of disagreement between tolerance and intolerance is often lost in the socialist perspective.

A gone-fishing portfolio is a portfolio of just a few stocks which should weather the ups and downs of the market fairly well while only rebalancing twice a year.

This gone-fishing portfolio is our default portfolio which can be used at any custodian.

We recommend this gone fishing portfolio for accounts hosted at Vanguard.

Our gone-fishing portfolios are used by thousands of people, so it makes sense the article about it would be among our most popular of 2019. Our 2020 gone-fishing portfolios will come out in February.

A long expansion is nothing to fear.

Use the following table to look up the 2019 blended index to benchmark your returns.

Investors hurt their finances more by missing out than they do by staying in.

While you can only use $3,000 per year of capital losses to reduce your taxable income, you should bank as much capital loss as possible for other future uses.

The increasing monoculture within universities pushes, at least slightly, each graduating class more toward favoring socialism.

Investors usually use short time periods and common indexes to measure performance.

The selection of what products we purchase or avoid for clients is based solely on what we believe gives our clients the best chance to meet their goals.

From such changes, the millionaire mindset is built and millions are gained.