Saving and investing — two sides of the same coin — Investing and saving are two of the most important components of personal finance. They are also two of the most confusing and intimidating concepts for most people. Investing, in particular, is a topic that is often shrouded in mystery, with lots of jargon and complicated terminology. In this article, we…

Following the herd when everyone is on board is rarely a good strategy — The stock market seems poised to keep dropping like a sharp knife cutting through butter, as fresh hot inflation readings have been pushing central banks on both sides of the Atlantic to step up their inflation- fighting stance. Central bankers have been utilizing their toolkits to combat inflation running at…

The Inflation panic versus the recession scare, which will prevail? — In his widely anticipated speech at the Jackson Hole economic symposium last week, Fed Chair Powell spooked the markets when he emphasized the central bank’s focus on fighting inflation at all costs: “While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also…

Cash is trash: Inflation is burning through your hard-earned money — Like most things in life, the economy moves in cycles. When the economy is growing and credit is expanding, businesses and consumers feel optimistic and increase their spending, thus pushing prices for goods and services higher. The opposite happens when the economy is contracting, and everyone turns into a pessimist…

Inflation is still far from the Fed’s target but panicking is not justified — Inflation has turned out to be more persistent than the Federal Reserve and other global central banks admitted to only a few months ago. The Ukraine war, ongoing supply-chain disruptions, and some renewed Covid lockdowns in China were some of the factors which have added fuel to the real cause…

The uglier it gets, the nearer we get towards the end of the tunnel — What is a recession? According to the official definition provided by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) “… a recession involves a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months. In our interpretation of this definition, we treat the three criteria — depth…

Diversifying into overseas markets might help — “World stocks on Friday closed out their steepest weekly slide since the pandemic meltdown of March 2020, as investors worried that tighter monetary policy by inflation-fighting central banks could damage economic growth.” The aforementioned quote is from a very recent news story by Reuters. How would you know it’s recent…

Say goodbye to the traditional 9–5, and say hello to the Digital Freelancer era. — Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, you could read plenty of stories about how ordinary people, without any special ‘conventional’ skills, other than their vision to make money out of a hobby they enjoy doing anyway, actually turned into a self-made multi-millionaire. In the post-pandemic era, the so-called…

Overreliance on seasonality for deciding on your stock investments can be tricky — Sell in May and go away is a popular Wall Street adage which refers to an observed seasonal tendency for equity markets to underperform between May and October each year, when compared to the six month period between November and April. …