Should you buy an annuity for your retirement?

Annuities are a popular retirement income vehicle with many insurance agents, registered representatives and financial advisers. They probably have as many supporters as detractors. Here are some of t...

Opinion: No ‘soft landing’ is in the cards from Fed rate hikes. Look for recession and a buying opportunity once stock prices decline.

Is the bear market of 2022 over? Are we already in the early innings of the next great bull market? The S&P 500 SPX, -0.16% finished 2022 with a 19% decline (its biggest pullback since 2008). Mean...

Intel’s dividend cut shows the need for quality. Here are 20 dividend stocks screened by UBS.

Stocks that pay high dividends can provide comfort during times of market turmoil. It is much easier to be patient if money is rolling in, and a strategy of reinvesting dividends may outperform when t...

‘Not a time to buy’: S&P 500 exiting ‘best era’ in decades for earnings growth amid ‘dried up’ liquidity

The U.S. stock market, as measured by the S&P 500 index, appears to be exiting the “best era” for growth in earnings per share in decades as sources of liquidity have dried up, according to resear...

Just how bad were holiday sales? The world’s biggest retailers are about to tell us

The nation’s retailers limped into last year’s holiday season with too much stuff that people didn’t want. We’re about to find out how much of it they were able to get rid of, and how much an avalanch...

Already worth $19 billion, Ray Dalio will be paid ‘billions’ more after retiring from Bridgewater: report

Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, is to be paid billions of dollars via an exit package he secured upon retiring from Bridgewater Associates last year, according to a report by the...

Wall Street Expects Brutal Coinbase Earnings. Why an Analyst Upgraded the Stock.

Wall Street is mostly muted ahead of earnings from Coinbase Global expecting to see deep losses and the lowest quarterly sales in two years from the cryptocurrency broker when the group reports earnin...

Invest right now in the stock market? Why bother when cash could be king

The harder question for investors nearly a year into the Federal Reserve’s inflation fight is whether buying the dip in stocks is wise, or earning a cool 5% yield on safe-haven Treasury bills, a cash ...

Al Gore’s Firm Sells Alibaba Stock, TSMC, and Shopify. It Bought TI.

Generation Investment Management, chaired by former Vice President Al Gore, recently made big changes in its portfolio, reshuffling its holdings in the semiconductor business as its money managers cit...

At 55 years old, I will have worked for 30 years — what are the pros and cons of retiring at that age? 

Dear MarketWatch,  I currently own one home, no mortgage with rental income. I own another home that will be paid off the year I turn 55. Both valued at $750,000.  I have a 401(k) and other stocks and...

I’m a single dad earning $100,000 – how do I maximize my retirement dollars?

Dear MarketWatch,  I make over $100,000 a year, and expect to for the foreseeable future. As of now, I am contributing 8% of my income to my 403(b) with a 3% 401(a) match; all Roth. It would be more, ...

Generous Bond Yields Prove There Is an Alternative to Stocks

Return with us to ancient times, when dinosaurs ruled, at least in technology terms. It was early 2007, when Blackberries were in everybody’s mitts and the first iPhone hadn’t yet gone on sale, let al...

Will Warren Buffett retire? What to look for in his annual letter.

Warren Buffett is an inspiration to retirees everywhere. In the 27 years since he reached what the Social Security system said was his full retirement age, shares of his Berkshire Hathaway BRK.B, +0.0...

These money and investing tips can hold up your portfolio if the market melts down

Don’t miss these top money and investing features: Sign up here to get MarketWatch’s best mutual funds and ETF stories emailed to you weekly! INVESTING NEWS & TRENDS Why the stock market’s pullbac...

Why Wall Street’s growth-heavy Nasdaq Composite is still rallying as Treasury yields rise

Stock-market investors should not blindly follow the established narratives suggesting rising Treasury yields usually spook technology and growth stocks but focus on underlying economic trends which a...

‘The risk is that we’re going to hit the brakes very, very hard,’ Larry Summers says

“‘The risk is that we’re going to hit the brakes very, very hard.’ ” — Larry Summers Almost a full year of monetary-policy tightening by the Federal Reserve appears to be having little impact on price...

Cathie Wood’s ARK Swoops In to Buy Shopify Stock After Recent Slump

High-profile fund manager Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management has increased holdings of e-commerce company Shopify and shed chip maker Nvidia the group said in a statement. ARK snapped up about $3...

7 tax tips for seniors to make the most of your deductions

Tax filing season just opened for 2022 returns, and the IRS is already warning that average refunds may be lower since most pandemic economic relief measures are finished. That means careful tax plann...

Dow falls 400 points as stocks suffer worst drop in a month after PPI data, Fed comments

U.S. stocks suffered their worst drop in a month on Thursday after hotter-than-expected data on wholesale prices and talk of more aggressive interest-rate hikes rattled markets. The S&P 500 SPX, -...

A potential stock-market catastrophe in the making: Risky option bets put Wall Street on edge

Professional and amateur traders are flocking to a risky type of equity option that some have likened to lottery tickets, drawn by the opportunity to reap massive returns in the span of just a few hou...

Amazon and Other Quality Stocks Have Been Hit Hard. They Could Be Buys. 

Quality stocks have been out of favor for a while now. The category includes names that have been slammed but that have bright outlooks—and those are potential buys.  There are many ways to define a q...

Michael Burry and David Tepper snapped up Alibaba during the fourth quarter

High-profile investors Michael Burry and David Tepper were buying Alibaba during the fourth quarter, potentially putting them in a position to profit from the reopening of the Chinese economy. Scion A...

Here come the 5% CDs

Don’t touch that dial. If you’re looking for certificates of deposit, the interest rates on offer should be—here’s hoping—heading higher following the latest inflation numbers out Tuesday morning. Rea...

Occidental Petroleum stock surges after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway discloses boosting stake to 28%

Shares of Occidental Petroleum Corp. OXY, +2.44% rallied 1.8% in afternoon trading Tuesday, after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRK.B, -0.94% BRK.A, -0.84% disclosed that it increased its s...

George Soros Snapped Up Tesla, Peloton, Crypto Stocks. What He Dumped.

Tesla and Peloton were on George Soros’s shopping list in the fourth quarter of last year, as he also took new positions in Carvana General Motors and crypto names, while dumping Zoom and Twitter  Sor...

Buying bonds now is a smart money move even if the Fed keeps hiking rates. Here’s why.

Bond investors can cheer real interest rates hitting a 15-year high. That’s because bonds historically have performed better in the wake of higher rather than lower real rates. The real interest rate ...

Will you regret that Roth conversion when you get a huge tax bill?

If you took advantage of the down market in 2022 to convert some of your IRA to a Roth, you’re about to get a reality check of how much that will cost you when you file your tax return. Tax-saving str...

I’m retired with about $1 million invested. Paying my adviser 1% would cost me $10K a year — no thanks. I’d rather pay someone hourly for help a couple times a year. Is this reasonable?

Getty Images Question: I hold roughly a million dollars in stocks and ETFs, not counting a small IRA and a small 401(k). My holdings are all in a brokerage account at one of the major brokerage houses...

George Soros Snapped Up Tesla, Peloton, Crypto Stocks. Dumped Zoom and Twitter.

Tesla and Peloton were on George Soros’s shopping list in the fourth quarter of last year, as he also took new positions in Carvana General Motors and crypto names, while dumping Zoom and Twitter  Sor...

George Soros loads up on Tesla and these other beaten-down stocks

Even as shares of Tesla Inc. sank last year, billionaire investor George Soros appeared to find something to like in the electric-vehicle maker — and some other beaten-down names — as the year came to...

Why January’s CPI report could deal a massive blow to the stock market

The stock market’s start-of-year rally is poised to fizzle if a highly-anticipated U.S. inflation report on Tuesday dashes hopes for a quicker retreat in the cost of living in America, warned market a...

The hunt for stocks with rising dividends: These fund managers have a strategy to keep your payouts growing

The broad stock-market rally so far in 2023 might make it easy to forget what a rough ride investors faced last year. It was a time when some active strategies focused on dividends, good cash-flow tre...