Resources and Stories for Real People

While recent financial news headlines have given a great deal of attention to the slate of expected U.S. mega-cap IPOs, a few relevant storylines may have slipped under investors’ radar. Despite geopolitical and economic uncertainty in the first five months of 2026, global stock market indexes have quietly posted solid

I’ll admit it: “Let’s talk about Social Security claiming” isn’t usually my opening line when I meet friends for dinner. And yet, with Peak 65 recently occurring (when more Americans turned 65 every day than in any previous year), it’s never been more important to talk about Social Security claiming,

Behavioral finance scholars often express skepticism about their own and others’ ability to avoid cognitive errors. Indeed, Daniel Kahneman, who, along with Amos Tversky, identified most of the cognitive errors we know, said that despite his decades of studying decision-making, he still committed the same cognitive errors as everyone else.

As markets closed in the U.S. on the last trading day of February 2026, year-to-date stock market returns ranged from middling — the S&P 500® Index was up ~0.7% — to very strong — the MSCI EM IMI was up nearly 14.5% in U.S. dollar terms. Over the weekend, geopolitical

Financial decision-making is often modeled as stable over time: Investors have preferences, update beliefs, and choose portfolios in predictable ways. But research at the intersection of neuroscience and finance paints a more complex — and more realistic — picture. How people process financial information depends not only on markets and

It was another remarkable year for the U.S. stock market in 2025. The S&P 500® Index rose nearly 18% with 46 new all-time highs during the year! While undoubtedly a good outcome, a single return figure fails to capture the full experience of investors. Figure 1 helps fill in the