The U.S. investment markets continued to defy gravity in the second quarter of the year, closing out the month of June—and the first half of 2021—at new record highs. This is the fifth consecutive quarter where the U.S. markets posted gains. Everywhere you looked in a diversified portfolio, you saw gains in the second quarter. [...]
When you marry or simply share a household with someone, your life changes—and your approach to managing your money may change as well. The good news is it’s usually not so difficult. At some point, you will have to ask yourselves some money questions—questions that pertain not only to your shared finances but also to [...]
You probably know that the U.S. stock market has been delivering the highest returns among all developed nations, not just in the last couple of years but over the most recent ten years. But that also means that U.S. stocks have become much more expensive relative to other nations. How much more? One of the [...]
Space is the final frontier. Our military now has a space force. We are about to get a full report from the government on what it knows about UFOs. Space is in the news, from space tourism to the long-shot prediction by Elon Musk that humans will soon colonize Mars. But is space a growth [...]
It is sometimes not easy to realize just how big the U.S. economy is compared with the rest of the world. But a recent graphic published by the GZero organization gives a pretty good hint. Look at the map, and notice that North Dakota—one of the smallest states in the U.S. in terms of economic [...]
There’s a lot of buzz in the investment world about Bitcoin—and cryptocurrencies generally. Is it an investment? A real medium of exchange? Some of this interest undoubtedly comes from the fact that, in 2009, Bitcoins were selling for eight cents a coin. At the peak earlier this year, one of those coins was trading at [...]
You aren’t likely to find a bigger contrast in economic fortunes than the one between the U.S. and Europe as we finally come out of the pandemic crisis. In the U.S., the real gross domestic product—the sum of all goods and services produced in America—grew by an annualized rate of 6.4% in the first quarter [...]
Someday, maybe before long, it will become normal again to get on a plane, and the more daring of us might even decide to travel outside the United States. But as we ease back into long-distance vacations, there is going to be an uneasy period where there are greater than normal numbers of cancellations, delays [...]
From January through October of last year, there were 900 million fewer international tourists from the same period the year before—due, of course, to the global pandemic travel restrictions. That’s not especially catastrophic for the U.S. economy, since travel and tourism represents only 2.8% of U.S. GDP. But what about the Philippines, where international tourists [...]
We don’t yet have a clear report card on how well-educated America’s students have been this school year, with so much remote learning during the pandemic. But there is a wealth of statistics about how America’s educational system compares with other countries. The National Center for Education Statistics examines between 58 and 61 different educational [...]
