Dave S. Gilreath, CFP

What happens with future rate cuts will go a long way toward determining what happens in the stock market

There’s a tasty stock market stew simmering into 2025.

The September rate cut signals the beginning of a cutting cycle that’s likely to bring down most interest rates in the U.S. economy.

POTUS election outcomes don’t typically affect stocks long term, but their uncertainty often has short term impacts.

Remarkably, the bull market has kept running strong amid sustained high rates.

REITs are a great way to invest in real estate without the hassle of managing properties.

Here are nine reasons the bulls will keep running.

Significant wealth from the stock market has been accumulated by people who don’t do anything most of the time.

Understanding market swings can help your portfolio

So how can inflation be decreasing amid economic growth and low unemployment, which should be pushing it the other way? The answer is rising economic productivity.

When rising productivity coincides with a growing labor force, productivity’s benefits for economic growth are amplified.

Believing in global diversification, legions of individual investors owning international funds have substantial exposure to chinese stocks, wittingly or not.

Investors looking for stocks poised to perform well in 2024 might want to consider industrials — companies that make stuff that manufacturers use to make stuff ultimately purchased by commercial and retail customers.

In recent years, negative returns from Chinese markets have turned off many professional investors. Yet, believing in global diversification, legions of individual investors owning international funds have substantial exposure to Chinese stocks.

What goes up, must come down.

There are hard ways and easy ways to invest in real estate.

The stock market has inherent risks, but the common belief that bonds with the best credit ratings are virtually riskless is false.

The U.S. economy has remained robust, the stock market is arguably in a new bull, and there are many indications that both will probably remain strong into 2024.

Investors considering real estate investment trusts (REITs) these days might want to focus on the last part of the famous saying from Warren Buffett: be “greedy when others are fearful.”

As the overall stock market morphs from a post-bear market to an embryonic bull, demand for manufacturing and construction materials is increasing, signaling distinct growth potential for this small but important sector.

As Madonna said in a 1984 hit, we are living in a material world.

Preferred stocks are something of a bond-stock hybrid. They don’t rise as much as common stocks, but they also don’t fall as much.

A slavish devotion to diversification can be self-defeating.

All too often, individual investors overlook or underestimate the importance of having a sound asset location strategy.

If a recession does begin this year, it will likely be far too mild to justify the longstanding “recessionoia” in the financial community and media.

Many individual investors tending to their portfolios are in a quandary about where to invest new cash in 2023.

In active management, investors rely on their skills (often with poor results) or those of professional investment managers (with widely varying results) to make investment decisions.

What many people think are the worst of times to invest are often actually the best, and vice versa.