Luke F. Delorme

I tallied S&P 500 index returns under different presidents. Even with Herbert Hoover’s atrocious left-handed start from 1929 through 1932, lefty presidents have seen annual S&P 500 growth almost 2 percentage points better than righty presidents. Under their 40 years of tenure, lefty presidents have seen price appreciation of about 7.2 percent per year. This…

Fifty-two percent of married Social Security beneficiaries receive at least half their total income from Social Security. Optimizing the claiming decision is critical to making sure they maximize their income. I want to take an opportunity to explain one way to do that: the “file and suspend” strategy for married, two-earner households. This approach has…

Experienced investors know that returns ebb and flow, and volatility is the name of the game, especially when tilting a portfolio toward stocks. When the stock market is priced higher, you should reduce your return expectations.

How should retirees think about allocating assets during retirement? One platitude says that retirees should decrease exposure to risk, and therefore to stocks, as they age. But this “safe” approach is increasingly being called into question.

Investors are buying stocks. The level of stock ownership as a share of portfolios is at a level only seen in 2000 and 2006-2007. The share of mutual fund investments in stock funds is almost 62 percent, according to data from the Investment Company Institute. It makes sense that investors are favoring stocks. Bond yields…

Investors and professional financial advisors often focus on tweaking asset allocations in order to max out returns and reduce volatility. Professional money managers receive huge bonuses if they can outperform the market by even a modest amount. Following one set of guidelines or another may increase your returns, but there is no guarantee and no…

In the early 20th century, professional baseball players batted over .400 four times in a 20-year span. Since Ted Williams’ magical 1941 season, no professional baseball player has batted .400. Although the aggregate professional batting average has remained stable at around .250, the variability of batting averages has declined as all players have become more…

One of our readers recently suggested that “One may find that Republicans tend to create private sector jobs and Democrats tend to create public sector jobs.”