S&P 500, Dow Jones Global ex-US, Gold, Bloomberg Commodity Index returns exclude reinvested dividends (gold does not pay a dividend) and the three-, five-, and 10-year returns are annualized; and the 10-year Treasury Note is simply the yield at the close of the day on each of the historical time periods.
Sources: Yahoo! Finance; MarketWatch; djindexes.com; U.S. Treasury; London Bullion Market Association.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. N/A means not applicable.
TRIVIAL SUPERPOWERS. Several publications, blogs and social media sites have asked people to share their trivial or useless superpowers. The editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, Marc Abrahams, defines this as, “the ability to reliably do some particular task that seems mundane to them, but that most people find impossible to do except once in a while by sheer luck.”
Here are a few of the responses readers shared with Abrahams and Marginal Revolution, which is the economics blog of George Mason University professors Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok.
“I can recall being amazed to learn at age 7 that my father, a broadly competent outdoorsman, after only ten minutes of walking in a jungle in Mexico had gotten lost. I knew exactly which way our car was and led him back to it, coming out of the jungle onto the road about 20 feet from the car…Of course, GPS and smartphones have made this not very useful.”
“I usually can estimate pretty closely what time it is, which was fairly useless back when people wore watches and is almost totally useless in cellphone era.”
“…one of my Useless Super-Powers is the ability to pour nearly identical amounts of liquid without thought or effort. In practice, for example: if I’m pouring wine for four people, there is almost always no visible difference between the contents of the glasses.”
“[I have] the ability to reorganize fridges/freezers and always find more room for whatever needs fitting.”
“…had a friend who could recite back to you the letters of any word you supplied, but in alphabetical order, and instantly. We tried to stump him with crazy complex words, to no avail.”
“I can always tell if someone is lying just by looking at them…I can also tell, just by looking at them, if they are standing up.”
Some might say that investors’ ability to remain invested and focused on long-term goals in uncertain markets is a superpower. If you have questions about the market or your investments, please get in touch.
Weekly Focus – Think About It
“Having a superpower has nothing to do with the ability to fly or jump, or superhuman strength. The truest superpowers are the ones we all possess: willpower, integrity, and most importantly, courage.”
—Jason Reynolds, author
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