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The Retired Investor: The Magnificent Seven
By Bill Schmick,
04:01PM / Friday, June 30, 2023
Last month, a new term for those stocks that have led the stock market higher this year surfaced on Wall Street. Investors have anointed Apply, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla as the new leaders in the equity market.   It isn't the first time a group of stocks have captured the imagination and money of the investing community and it won't be the last. FANG, for example, an acronym that represented Facebook (now called Meta), Apple, Netflix, and Google have been a favorite investment group that has rewarded investors for buying and holding over the last decade or so.   Through the decades, there have been many such groups that provided

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@theMarket: Traders Profit-Taking After Great Run
By Bill Schmick,
11:22AM / Saturday, June 24, 2023
What goes up, must come down — at least in the stock market. That doesn't mean that the bull market is over. More upside ahead in equities is a strong possibility, but first, we need to bottom.   "Stocks are stretched at this point; the rubber band could stretch further, but not right now. I believe next week we might see some downside in the averages (maybe 100 points give or take on the S&P 500), but then up again too as high as 4,600."   That was my take on where stocks were going in last week's column. Thus far, we seem to be right on target. Artificial intelligence stocks are leading this bout of profit-taking. Many smaller AI

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The Retired Investor: Teens Face Robust Summer Job Market
By Bill Schmick,
03:19PM / Friday, June 23, 2023
Summer jobs for teenagers are expected to rise this summer. Even better news, while the job openings are higher, so too are the wages young workers can command.   Teens have a long history of labor market participation in America. Between World War II and the end of the 20th century, at least half of the nation's teenagers were active participants in the labor force.    Back in my day, getting a summer job in high school was a status symbol, a source of spending money, and a chance to show the world what I could accomplish given the chance. Back then, summer jobs provided real-world experience and helped street kids like me develop work-related skills,

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The Retired Investor: Will the Insurance Sector Become Another Victim of Climate Change?
By Bill Schmick,
04:08PM / Thursday, June 15, 2023
As the smoke from Canadian wildfires clears (literally) here in the Northeast, the awareness of climate change has risen. For the insurance industry, that knowledge has already precipitated some worrying policy changes.   Last month, the news that two major insurers were no longer going to sell homeowner's policies in California may have come as a surprise to some. But like me, I am sure that most readers simply dismissed the issue as a problem between a West Coast state's regulations and the insurance industry.   In California, which some think as the home of liberal politicians and crazy ideas, regulators have capped rates insurance companies can

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@theMarket: Bulls Need More Fuel to Move Higher
By Bill Schmick,
05:05PM / Saturday, June 10, 2023
The bull market has been a story of eight to 10 stocks for most of the year. The frenzied trade in AI stocks has fueled those gains in that elite group of mega-stocks. But investors need to expand their focus to other areas for the stock market to continue to climb.   Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become this year's buzz words. Even though it has been around for well over a decade, investors have suddenly recognized the potential of this technological advancement. The benefits to productivity and economic growth in the years ahead may be as important, if not more important, as the internet revolution.   As in the dot.com boom, any company that can wag the

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