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 gaps, capturing major headlines from
What Investors Can Learn From 2025 Market Trends Read More »
“Don’t gamble,” Will Rogers said. “Take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.”1 The Psychology Behind Hindsight Bias The psychologist Baruch Fischhoff, who introduced us to hindsight shortcuts and errors, wrote, “In hindsight, people consistently exaggerate
Would You Drive Looking Through the Rear-View Mirror? Read More »
In a volatile year for U.S. stocks, the overall U.S. bond market has maintained a positive year-to-date total return throughout 2025. For investors allocating to balanced portfolios of both asset classes, bonds are likely to have played a useful role, sometimes helping offset periods of disappointing stock returns and reducing total portfolio volatility. However, this
Three Things Investors Should Know About Today’s Bond Market Read More »
Many consider Warren Buffett to be the most famous value investor the world has ever known. This can be debated, but with an investment career that spans nearly seven decades, he has undeniably learned a thing or two about markets. How else would you get a nickname like the Oracle of Omaha? An enduring and
Lessons From the Oracle Read More »
Consider your answer to the following question: “Suppose you are given an opportunity to replace your current investment portfolio with a new portfolio. The new portfolio has a 50-50 chance to increase by 50% your standard of living during your lifetime. However, the new portfolio also has a 50-50 chance to decrease your standard of
Investment Risk, Investor Risk Tolerance and Behavioral Goals-Based Portfolios Read More »
International Stocks vs. U.S. Stocks International stocks have not done well recently compared with U.S. stocks. The 2024 return of international stocks (as measured by the MSCI World ex USA Index) was just under 5%, lagging by nearly 20 percentage points the return of U.S. stocks (as measured by the MSCI USA Index). And the
International Stocks and Recency Bias Read More »
While it might be tempting to chase top-performing sectors, we demonstrate why in a broadly diversified portfolio, every sector doesn’t have to increase in value over any period to earn a positive return over the long term.
We unpack the pros and cons of typical three-bucket portfolios, including the potential behavioral benefit and costs.
Understanding the Behavioral Advantage and Trade-Offs of Bucket Portfolios Read More »
If there was ever a year that we were reminded of the difficulty of making stock market predictions, it was 2020. Yet, many clients continue to search for “expert” market outlooks in hopes of positioning their portfolio to outperform.
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED ON DIMENSIONAL.COM. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE. Some investors favor a dollar-cost averaging (DCA) approach to deploying their investment capital. Unlike lump-sum investing, in which the full amount of available capital is invested upfront, DCA spreads out investment contributions using installments over time. The appeal of DCA is
Taking Stock of Lump-Sum Investing vs. Dollar-Cost Averaging Read More »