Monthly Archives: February 2009

New Fed Numbers

By Lon Jefferies | Published: February 23, 2009
Last week, the Federal Reserve announced updated figures concerning the direction of the U.S. economy. Alarmingly, Ben Bernanke announced it is “very likely” the unemployment rate will be above 8% soon. Most Fed officials project unemployment to reach 9% by the end of 2009. The Fed revised previous positions and stated the U.S. economy will contract [...]
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Is Investing Now Like Trying To Catch A Falling Knife?

By Lon Jefferies | Published: February 17, 2009
Due to the treacherous equities markets of the last 16 months, many individuals are afraid to invest new dollars at this point. Most would prefer to wait until the outlook is clear and the crisis is over before diving back into the market. However, waiting until the outlook is clear is frequently very costly for investors. [...]
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Keeping the Downturn in Perspective – The Stock Market

By Lon Jefferies | Published: February 10, 2009
I’d like to pass on a “back-of-the-envelope” calculation performed by Mark Coffelt of Empiric Advisors, a fellow NAPFA member: Ten years ago, the S&P 500 yielded about 1.4 percent. The price-to-earnings ratio was close to 28 times. Earnings over the decades have grown about 6 percent per year. To calculate the expected return 10 years ago, [...]
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Increased Volatility

By Lon Jefferies | Published: February 3, 2009
Unfortunately, most individuals who have assets to invest are hesitant during this market pullback and many individuals who see this market lull as a buying opportunity don’t have funds to invest. This is a common scenario during periods of increased market volatility, and often stretches out the duration of stagnant equity markets. How volatile is this [...]
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