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 30 of 88
For most investors, the S&P 500 vs total market debate is nearly academic. The two indices are highly correlated, the performance gap is rarely more than 0.5% annually, and both deliver broad U.S. equity exposure at near-zero cost. But at $5M or $10M in equity holdings, small differences in composit
The S&P Global Water Index holds exactly 50 companies, drawn from the S&P Global BMI, split across two sub-industries: water utilities and water equipment, instruments, and materials. Float-adjusted market capitalization determines the weights, with single-stock caps applied to prevent any one name
The S&P 500 divides its 500 constituents into 11 S&P sectors under the Global Industry Classification Standard, a framework jointly developed by S&P Dow Jones Indices and MSCI in 1999. Understanding which sectors you own, at what weights, and how they behave across economic cycles is foundational to
The NASDAQ vs S&P 500 chart is one of the most watched comparisons in public markets, but most analysis of it is written for retail investors with $50K in a brokerage account. If you're sitting on a $5M+ portfolio, the relevant questions are different: concentration risk you may already carry throug
The S&P 500 presidential cycle is a pattern first documented by Yale Hirsch in the Stock Trader's Almanac: stock returns tend to follow a predictable rhythm across the four years of a presidential term, with year three historically the strongest and year two the weakest. The pattern is real in the h
The S&P 500 bear market definition is straightforward: a decline of 20% or more from a recent peak, sustained for at least two months. What that number means for a $10M portfolio is less straightforward. According to Hartford Funds analysis of Ned Davis Research data, since 1928 the S&P 500 has expe
The S&P 500 standard deviation has averaged roughly 15-17% annualized over long historical periods, according to Vanguard research. That number is almost useless on its own. What matters is the regime you're in, the size of your portfolio, and whether your other holdings are masking or amplifying th
The S&P Select Industry Indices are a family of approximately 130 sub-industry benchmarks built on GICS classifications, each using equal-weight construction rather than the market-cap weighting that defines the S&P 500. That single methodological difference changes everything about how they behave,
S&P and Moody's ratings are the closest thing fixed income markets have to a shared language. A single letter change can trigger billions in forced selling, move borrowing costs by hundreds of basis points, and restructure which institutional buyers can legally hold a security. For a $5M+ fixed inco
From 2009 through 2021, the correlation between the Fed's total assets and the S&P 500 price level exceeded 0.95 on a rolling annual basis. That is one of the strongest macro relationships in modern market history. Then 2022 happened, and the correlation broke sharply. Understanding when this relati
Dividends have accounted for approximately 40% of the S&P 500's total return from 1930 to 2022, according to research from Hartford Funds and Ned Davis Research. That figure surprises most investors who fixate on price movement. For anyone managing a $5M+ portfolio, understanding how S&P 500 dividen
The S&P 500's long-run inflation-adjusted return has averaged approximately 6.5–7% annually since 1871, according to Robert Shiller's Yale dataset. That figure includes reinvested dividends. Strip those out, or run the math after taxes for a $5M+ investor in a high-tax state, and you're looking at s