By Craig Verdi, CFP® This is not in the sense of religious faith, or faith in something that cannot be demonstrated. It is faith in an economic fact. That is, in general, you must have faith that certain “things” are going to become more expensive and more valuable over time. This seems intuitive, but it is not. Very few people …
By Craig Verdi, CFP® Many people confuse Commodities such as gold, silver and copper as equity assets. They are not! Contrary to what the gold salesmen are pitching, the price of metals, crops, lumber or almost any commodity has never kept up with inflation. There are times when many things are cheap, such as steel is now. We have steel …
By Craig Verdi CFP® Inflation seems bad because we really are paying higher prices and in some cases much higher prices on goods and services. Healthcare is the glaring exception when it comes to inflation. It is much higher and probably will continue as we get older. But with the old health care from 50 or 100 years ago you …
By Craig Verdi, CFP® “Don’t you think I should have a certain percentage in bonds? Everything I read says that I should have 20-50% of my money in bonds.” I hear these things all the time. And there have been good times to buy bonds. As I write this it is the end of April, 2015. The yield on the …
By Craig Verdi, CFP® Why do good companies increase in value in the long run? The short answer is by increasing the sales, earnings, growth and distributions/dividends of the company. Let’s look at a very simple example of a company you have a chance to invest in. Imagine that a young entrepreneur, Marcus, decides to open a hot dog stand …