Proactive Tax Planning

Here's a very interesting chart and commentary by Bespoke for you.

As of yesterday morning, the 101 stocks in the S&P 500 that pay no dividend were up an average of 20.7% YTD, while the 100 S&P 500 stocks with the highest dividend yields were actually down an average of -3.2% YTD. Remember, the S&P index is up more than 17% YTD, so anything down on the year is massively underperforming.

Below is a table listing the 29 stocks in the S&P 500 that had the HIGHEST indicated dividend yields (5%+) yesterday morning. As you'll see at the bottom of the table, these 29 stocks are down an average of -8.37% YTD on a total return basis, so the 5%+ dividend yields are being more than erased by falling share prices for many of these names.

The longer your time horizon, the higher your probability of success in the markets.

The good news is inflation is falling pretty quickly.

After peaking at more than 9% in June last year, the latest inflation reading was a bit under 3%.

It took 16 months for the inflation rate to go from under 3% to over 9%. It’s taken just 12 months to go from over 9% to under 3%.

However, the bad news is inflation has been higher than wage growth for some time now.

Most folks know that mortgage rates are about 7% right now.

Zillow recently released a report on the "hidden" costs of owning a home. They estimate the average ancillary homeownership costs — utilities, insurance, maintenance, property taxes, etc. — to be more than $14,100 annually. That’s an additional $1,100 a month on top of your mortgage.

And those numbers are even higher in most metro areas listed on the map.

When you add in things like lawn care, furniture, and all of the other stuff you have to buy to fill up your house, these numbers are probably on the low side.