Knowledge Base
Lee Anderson writes about tax strategy, estate planning, and wealth management for FatFire, covering the questions that matter to high-net-worth households pursuing financial independence. Every article draws on primary sources including IRS guidance, fund prospectuses, and academic research, and is reviewed against the FatFire editorial standards (fatfire.com/editorial-standards/) before publication.
516 articles — page 16 of 43
The S&P 500's year-over-year price change is one of the most cited numbers in finance and one of the most misread. For a FATFIRE portfolio, the gross nominal return is almost irrelevant.
The NYSE vs S&P 500 distinction is one of the most commonly conflated in finance, and getting it wrong has real portfolio consequences.
The S&P 500 equal weight index holds the same 500 companies as the standard index but assigns each one a fixed weight of approximately 0.2%, regardless of size.
The NASDAQ vs S&P 500 historical returns debate has a clear answer on raw numbers: the NASDAQ wins, often by a wide margin.
S&P 500 rolling returns reveal something point-to-point measurements never can: the full distribution of outcomes across every historical entry point.
The S&P 500 requirements set a hard floor that excludes roughly 98% of all U.S. publicly traded companies.
The S&P 500 correlation matrix is a 500x500 grid of Pearson correlation coefficients, each measuring how closely two stocks move together over a defined period.
The S&P 500 Quality Index selects the top 100 stocks from the S&P 500 universe ranked by a composite quality score built from three equally weighted components: return on equity, accruals ratio, and financial leverage. That's it. No momentum tilt, no dividend screen, no size bias. Just a systematic
The S&P 500 divisor is a single proprietary number, currently in the range of 8.3 billion, that converts the aggregate float-adjusted market capitalization of 500 companies into the index level you see quoted every trading day. The formula is straightforward: sum the float-adjusted market caps of al
The S&P 500's eligibility criteria are more specific than most investors realize, and the thresholds shift regularly.
The short answer: sometimes, for some managers, by a shrinking margin.
Parametric S&P 500 investing is a quantitative portfolio construction methodology that holds individual constituent securities rather than pooled fund shares, then applies rules-based filters to modify exposures across sectors, factors, or individual positions. The result is a portfolio that tracks