Best Investments in 2019
With the new year finally upon us, you may be aching to make some significant changes in your life. Maybe you want to start exercising more often and taking better care of your health.
Or, perhaps you want to spend more quality time with your kids — time where you only focus on them and nothing else.
And maybe, just maybe, you’re starting to feel like 2019 is the year you should finally start investing your money for long-term growth. Maybe you have built up a respectable sum of money in a high-interest savings account, but you know that saving cash isn’t enough.
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How much you’ll need to invest each month to retire with $3 million at age 20, 30, 40 and beyond
How much you’ll need to invest each month to retire with $3 million at age 20, 30, 40 and beyond
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Singapore’s economy dodges technical recession after growing 0.6% in the third quarter
Singapore’s economy — often seen as a bellwether for global growth — avoided a technical recession after growing by 0.6% in the third quarter, compared to the previous three months.
That quarter-on-quarter expansion marked a reversal from the revised 2.7% decline in the April-to-June period, official advance estimates by the Ministry of Trade and Industry showed on Monday. On a year-on-year basis, Singapore’s economy grew 0.1% in the third quarter.
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Bill Gates gave away $35 billion this year but didn’t see his personal net worth drop
Microsoft founder Bill Gates takes an aggressive approach to investing, with 60% of his assets invested in equities.
Gates added $16 billion to his net worth this year, despite giving away over $35 billion to charity, according to Bloomberg.
After Jeff Bezos, Gates is the world’s richest person, with total wealth of $106 billion.
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Sterling shrugs as UK leader Boris Johnson suspends Parliament for five weeks
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office has confirmed the British Parliament will be suspended for the next five weeks starting Monday, after Johnson visited his counterpart in Dublin to discuss solutions to a problem that bedevilled his predecessor Theresa May: how to reconcile an open border between Ireland and the UK, while allowing Britain to strike independent trade deals in the future.
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US debt levels could be 2,000% of economy, a Wall Street report suggests
Total potential debt for the U.S. by one all-encompassing measure is running close to 2,000% of GDP, according to an analysis that suggests danger but also cautions against reading too much into the level.
AB Bernstein came up with the calculation — 1,832%, to be exact — by including not only traditional levels of public debt like bonds but also financial debt and all its complexities as well as future obligations for so-called entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and public pensions.
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Borneo for New Indonesia Capital
Indonesia will build a new capital city on the island of Borneo, home to some of the world’s biggest coal reserves and orangutan habitats, as President Joko Widodo seeks to ease pressure on congested and sinking Jakarta.
The new administrative headquarters will be located between North Penajam Paser and Kutai Kartanegara in East Kalimantan, Jokowi, as the president is commonly known, told reporters in Jakarta on Monday. The relocation of the capital, some 1,400 kilometers away from Jakarta, will help spread economic activity outside the nation’s most-populous island of Java, the president said.
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Stay Calm and Buy Stocks
Trade war? Yes. Global slowdown? Yes. Volatile market? Yes. But does that mean investors should cash out and run? Not this top-performing fund manager. She’s staying put.
Joanna Kwok, who co-manages the JPMorgan Asia Growth Fund, says volatility will linger in Asia markets due to trade war uncertainty and corporate earnings concerns. Even with the unpredictability of U.S. President Donald Trump and other political risks, investors should hang on as valuations suggest “decent” returns in the next 12 months, she said.
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Investors, ‘starved for returns,’ flood private markets in search of high-growth opportunities
* Money spent in venture capital and other alternative investments is surging as investors look for riskier, but higher-yielding investments.
* The trend coincides with relatively low returns from more conventional Wall Street investments such as stocks and bonds, and a drop in the number of publicly traded companies.
* “In a world where big institutional investors find themselves starved for returns, it’s not surprising that they have steadily increased allocations to private markets and you’ve seen capital continuing to flow into the asset class,” says McKinsey Partner Bryce Klempner.
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What is your net worth?
Even if you don’t fly in first class or summer in the Hamptons, this simple equation is an important tool that says a lot about your financial health. Still, most people don’t bother to calculate it. That’s a mistake.
“It’s the first snapshot into an overall look at your finances,” said Michael LaRiviere, a certified financial planner at Essex Financial in Connecticut.
Subtract what you owe from what you own to determine your net worth.
That will give you a good picture of your financial health.
If your net worth is in the red, don’t panic.
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Powers used by the security services to "Hoover up" communications data from most people in the UK
Liberty's lawyers say that "bulk" data gathered by the security services and other agencies, under warrants granted by a judge or the home secretary, can include:
intimate data including an individual's internet browsing history
which apps they have downloaded to their phone
their usernames and passwords
and even cell site data that can pin-point a person's location at a given time
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London Beats New York in Attracting Saudi ETF Investor Billions
Investors betting on Saudi Arabian shares are showing a clear preference for funds listed in Europe over the U.S. The contrasting picture may come down to which market offers lower fees and more attractive treatment on taxes and dividends.
An exchange-traded fund focused on Saudi equities offered by BlackRock Inc. in New York since 2015, the year when the oil-rich kingdom started opening up to foreigners, drew net inflows of about $626 million this year, quadrupling in size from the end of 2018.
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Brazil Congress Attempts to Liberalize Purchase of Land by Foreigners
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Negotiation of agricultural land for foreign investors has returned to the Brasília agenda. Senator Irajá Abreu (PSD-TO) filed last week a new bill on the topic, more flexible to the sale or leasing of rural properties, provided that these groups form a company in Brazil.
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Wealthy Families Are Adding Forests to Their Portfolios
long-term bet on growth.
Tom Crowder spent much of his two-year career in the NFL running away from men who weighed upwards of 300 pounds. These days? He worries about bears and snakes. As a senior vice president at Bank of America Corp., Crowder spends most days in the woods, from the evergreen forests of New England to the wetlands of the Carolinas, scouting U.S. timberland assets for people with a net worth of at least $100 million and a minimum of $10 million to invest.
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