McLean Asset Management

What is the Stock Market?

By McLean Asset Management / April 13, 2017 /

The stock market is confusing. When you talk about it, people tend to nod their heads sagely and make bland comments, like they do with most things relating to the economy. We know it’s important, and most of us hope it will provide us the retirement we want – but we don’t actually understand it,…

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Indexes 101, Part 2: Why So Many Indexes?

By McLean Asset Management / April 11, 2017 /

Remember when the financial media was positively giddy over the fact that the Dow Jones hit 20,000 points earlier this year (and we weren’t so impressed)? In part one of this series, we looked at what exactly the “points” measure in market indexes (not always what you might expect, as it turns out). Today, I…

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What Does It Mean When People Say the Trump Rally Has Created an ‘Overvalued’ Market?

By McLean Asset Management / April 7, 2017 /

The financial markets are interesting things. Their direction is largely determined by emotion, yet everyone pretends they are based on cold, hard numbers. Past market behavior is easily quantified, so people feel like if they just study the numbers enough or use the right models, they’ll be able to figure out what will happen next.…

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Review: 5 Things You Need to Know to Reach Your Financial Goals

By McLean Asset Management / April 7, 2017 /

This is one of the best retirement “tips” articles I’ve read in a long time. Retirement is generally pretty straightforward. It’s a lot like losing weight and living a healthier lifestyle. Everyone kind of knows what they need to do to reach their goals, at least in a general way, but very few people actually want…

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Review: A new market high: First ETF to target marijuana stocks

By McLean Asset Management / April 7, 2017 /

The financial services industry can be incredibly creative when it comes to money. And one of their favorites is to launch products around the hot new trends – whether they are actually useful isn’t really important. And marijuana legalization is definitely one of the hot new trends – especially in Canada where a marijuana ETF…

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Review: How trading ETFs may lose you money—especially if you’re a guy

By McLean Asset Management / March 31, 2017 /

Trading is bad for your wealth. The data is monstrously clear on this. This article singles out ETFs, but really it’s anything. Yes, ETFs have made it easier to make bets on what different pieces of the market will do, but it’s not like anyone was lacking in ways to trade before ETFs came along.…

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Review: Not Getting a Big Tax Refund? You’re Actually Doing It Right

By McLean Asset Management / March 31, 2017 /

We see these types of articles every year, and there’s a reason for that. A tax refund is not free money. In fact, it’s returning free money that you gave to the government. It’s the difference between what you actually owed and what was withheld from your paycheck. You could (and should) have had access…

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Is the ‘Trump Rally’ Really as Great as Everyone Says?

By McLean Asset Management / March 24, 2017 /

There’s been a lot of talk about the “Trump Rally,” and just how historic it’s been. MarketWatch called it  “the best 50-day performance for a GOP commander-in-chief ever[.]” The media loves to overstate things, and it made me want to dig in and figure out what is actually going on. Before we dive in, I…

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Review: Top 6 Common Retirement Mistakes

By McLean Asset Management / March 24, 2017 /

There’s some good advice in this article – with one glaring exception. Most of the article covers some of the common mistakes people make when retiring – things like not getting the most out of Social Security, missing Medicare deadlines, or not knowing what you actually want to do in retirement. Those are great reminders, but…

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