Knowledge Base
Tax strategy, healthcare before Medicare, the post-FIRE identity shift, and the financial decisions that get more complicated after you stop earning.
1054 articles — page 27 of 88
The S&P 500 sector performance chart is the fastest way to see where institutional money is moving before that movement shows up in index-level returns. For a $5M+ equity portfolio, reading it correctly is not optional. The difference between the best and worst S&P 500 sector in a single year can ex
The short answer: better than most investors expect, and not differently enough from non-election years to justify defensive repositioning. Schwab's analysis of S&P 500 returns from 1948 through 2020 found positive returns in 17 of 19 presidential election years. The Stock Trader's Almanac puts the
S&P 500 short interest tracks the total shares sold short but not yet repurchased across index components. It functions as a real-time sentiment gauge for institutional conviction, not retail opinion. When aggregate short interest rises sharply, sophisticated money is making a directional bet with r
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 rebalance is a quarterly reconstitution process that forces hundreds of billions of dollars in index-tracking assets to move simultaneously. The S&P Index Committee announces changes with roughly five to seven business days of notice before the effective date, and that compressed window
The S&P 500 payout ratio currently sits in the 35–42% range, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices quarterly earnings data, well below the long-run historical average of 40–50%. That gap is not a sign of corporate stinginess. It reflects a structural shift in how large-cap companies return capital, and
The market risk premium for the S&P 500 measures the excess return investors demand for holding equities over risk-free assets. As of January 2024, Damodaran's implied estimate sits near 4.6%, well below the long-run historical average of roughly 7 percentage points. That gap has direct consequences
Palantir Technologies was officially added to the S&P 500 effective September 23, 2024, replacing American Airlines in the index. S&P Dow Jones Indices announced the inclusion on September 6, 2024, giving institutional investors roughly five business days to position ahead of mandatory rebalancing.
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. As of 2024, the minimum unadjusted market capitalization stands at $14.5 billion, up from $12.7 billion in 2023, per the S&P Dow Jones Indices methodology document. That single numbe
The S&P national AMT-free municipal bond index tracks investment-grade, tax-exempt bonds issued by U.S. state and local governments, with one defining constraint: every constituent bond is explicitly exempt from the Alternative Minimum Tax. For investors in the top federal bracket, that single crite
The short answer: sometimes, for some managers, by a shrinking margin. When comparing private equity returns vs S&P 500 performance on a net-of-fees, risk-adjusted basis, the evidence is more ambiguous than the PE sales pitch suggests. The alpha is real at the top quartile. The problem is getting th