Stocks Will Struggle to Beat 5% Treasurys, Strategists Say. And What the Heck Is ‘Out-Dexing?’

A top Wall Street forecaster told me how to beat the stock market from here: Buy a Treasury bill. I would leak the tip on Reddit, but I’m not sure how many moon rocket emojis to use. A six-month Treas...

Opinion: At last — somebody is trying to ‘save’ Social Security

Rude Europeans used to tell stories, possibly apocryphal, about American tourists who would ask for directions to a famous landmark while actually standing right in front of it. The Parisian would loo...

Opinion: Where’s the bull market? Stock-market investors aren’t buying it.

Have Joe and Joanna Q. Public been buying the stock-market rally of the past five months? Not according to our data. Instead, they show that ordinary investors have been bailing out of stock funds for...

Here’s where the 60/40 could really fail you. But a better option may be under your nose.

Only once in the past 100 years have America’s long-term savers done worse than they did last year. Only in 1974 — the year of Watergate, OPEC embargoes, gas lines and recession — did the standard, be...

How to retire rich — even if you just got wiped out

The Wall Street Journal published an article over the weekend about all the millennials and Generation Z “zoomers” who have fled the markets after getting crushed in the 2022 rout. One was 25-year-old...

Tesla Is Last Stronghold for Investors Buying the Dip in Tech Stocks

Listen to article (2 minutes) After a brutal year for technology stocks, individual investors have lost their appetite for buying the dip, with one notable exception. They are still scooping up shares...

This simple, no-sweat portfolio makes money in all markets

Well now. This is interesting. Very interesting. And—potentially — very profitable. Especially if you want your savings to go to work and make you money in all environments—booms and slumps, crashes a...

Why Utilities and Energy Are the Stock Market Sectors to Play Right Now

If 2022’s stock market could be described as brutal, 2023’s might best be described as befuddling. Thankfully, there is a portfolio for that. What’s so befuddling? It’s not just that there is uncertai...

For All His Criticisms of Disney, Peltz and Iger Probably Agree: Streaming Has to Be Fixed

“Great news: Nelson Peltz made a slide deck about me,” said no CEO ever. But maybe Walt Disney Bob Iger had mixed feelings about the 35-pager that dropped this past week. One one hand, it says that he...

It’s Pharma Time: Why Merck and Lilly Stock Are Buys, but not Pfizer.

My 2023 biotech outlook calls for continued momentum in name changes. I just need to figure out what the stocks will do. Last year, Respira Technologies became Qnovia. It’s run by a former tobacco exe...

This ‘crazy’ retirement portfolio has just beaten Wall Street for 50 years

You could call it crazy. You could call it genius. Or maybe you could call it a little of both. We’re talking about a simple portfolio that absolutely anyone could follow in their own 401(k) or IRA or...

Investors who did this one thing survived the markets in 2022

Forget inflation. Forget oil prices. Forget Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Forget layoffs in the tech sector. Forget the yield curve. When I sat down to write about what worked for investors in...

Cheap? Maybe. But These Stocks Have Been Dead Money for Decades.

Cheesecake Factory appears to be “running the same play,” wrote J.P. Morgan analyst John Ivankoe in a recent restaurant industry outlook. I don’t think he meant it as a compliment—the stock, he noted,...

11 high-yield dividend stocks that are Wall Street’s favorites for 2023

Investors love dividend stocks but there are different ways to look at them, including various “quality” approaches. Today we are focusing on high yields. A high dividend yield can be a warning that i...

T. Rowe Price Has Had a Rough Time of Late. Negativity in the Money Manager’s Stock Could Be Overdone.

Money manager T. Rowe Price Group has fallen way out of favor on Wall Street. There are 15 analysts covering the stock, according to FactSet. None say to buy. More say to sell than hold. That’s approa...

History says inflation could persist for a decade

If you are a retiree, or even near to retirement, you are probably more vulnerable to inflation than most. Your cost of living is probably rising faster than your income. You’re lucky if any pension o...

One reason the rich get richer

Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald disagreed about the rich. Fitzgerald, who had stars in his eyes, supposedly said, “The rich are different from the rest of us.” “Yes,” repli...

Chinese Stocks Look Cheap. But Bargain Hunters Risk Losing Big.

Thirty years ago this past week, Eaton Vance launched a U.S. mutual fund for investing in China. I remember the wholesaler’s sandwiches. A mutual fund wholesaler, if you’re unfamiliar with the term, i...

Why I don’t want I-bonds

There’s been such a rush to buy “I-bonds,” inflation-protected bonds from the U.S. government, that the TreasuryDirect website crashed. I-bonds have been one of the hottest investments of the year. Pe...

How bad could it get for your 401(k)?

Probably the best argument for investing some more of our 401(k)s in the stock market right now is all the people telling us not to. As a general rule, it’s been a good time to be bullish when so many...

Chinese Stocks Are a Screaming Bargain. Don’t Buy Them.

Another brutal selloff for China’s tech champions presents U.S. investors with a dangerous bargain. Shares like Alibaba are deeply discounted compared with their U.S. counterparts. But “shares” might ...

Opinion: Liz Truss is out — why that might be good for your 401(k)

The British pound rose on the news that Liz Truss was standing down. (It’s now the best performing currency of the last month, if you can believe). The interest rate on British government bonds fell. ...

Airline Stocks Have Struggled. Here Are a Few Highfliers.

Some airline stocks trade at five times projected earnings. Why so expensive, you might be wondering. The group’s reputation on capital preservation at the moment ranks somewhere between damaged and U...

Americans are souring on the housing market and California is now giving residents up to $1,050 of ‘inflation relief’ — here’s who is eligible

Hi, MarketWatchers. Don’t miss these top stories. September jobs report highlights major shift in white-collar work — as Labor Department plans changes to jobs questionnaire ‘The old question was beco...

The U.S. Dollar Is Superstrong. 8 Ways to Invest Abroad.

The U.S. dollar got a brief, welcome walloping this past week, falling 1.5% on Tuesday alone against a basket of six major currencies. It remains up a hefty 17% for the year, and close to its stronges...

Buying stocks for dividend income? Read this first

There is nothing wrong in principle with buying stocks for the income they generate, through dividends, instead of growth. It’s a strategy that’s especially appealing to retirees and others who need t...

Don’t panic about your 401(k)

I’ve been doing this—writing about the stock market and investments—for a quarter of a century. It’s been a heckuva turbulent ride, including Russian defaults, emerging market crises, dot-com disaster...

Stocks Are Sinking and Rates Are Rising. It’s Painful, But We’re Heading for Normal.

Stocks and bonds are tumbling. Housing has weakened. And I haven’t heard a word about nonfungible cartoon monkey tokens in maybe three months. Strategists are now turning to truly bizarre assets—two I...

Opinion: Americans are feeling poorer for good reason: Household wealth was shredded by inflation and Fed tightening

U.S. households’ real wealth plunged at a record 20.9% annual rate to $143 trillion in the second quarter of the year, with modest gains in home values offset by high inflation and a big selloff in th...

Shoppers Are Getting Cheap. Here Are Stocks to Buy in a Trade-Down Economy

I regret buying a twin pack of 40-ounce ranch dressing jugs this past week. It’s not that I over-ranched—the warehouse club industry was built around rewarding extreme condiment commitments with low u...

Opinion: Fidelity’s bitcoin move getting all the wrong publicity

What would Ned Johnson do? The late, great Fidelity Investments honcho built his family’s Boston-based money management firm into one of the biggest in the world over the course of a long career. John...