TargetVGchart

How Americans Save: The Growth of Target-Date Funds

by InvestingThought Leadership

The premise is simple. Set it and forget it. Vanguard and others offer this approach for target-date retirement funds. Of two investing extremes, there is an active self-directed retirement account, where you pick individual stocks and strive to have an edge (fewer than 1 in 200 with Vanguard accounts do thisI'm in this group), and there's auto-pilot.Target-date is auto-pilot squared. Target funds invest in index funds and adjust asset allocation from equity leaning, usually 90/10 equity-to-fixe ...

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June’s Index

by Index

This month's index looks at turnover among the Forbes 400, 401k allocations, healthcare spend skews, bubbles, house sizes, cash flow per hospital bed, hospital returns on capital, the popularity of health and financial search terms, and more. Percentage of listees or heirs from the 1982 Forbes 400 list to be bumped off by 2014: 71%. Percentage of Vanguard 401k accounts invested solely in one target-date fund as of 2007: 8% 2018: 52% 2023 Vanguard estimate: 8 in 10 Ratio of mea ...

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Part 2: Can Healthcare Costs Move Stocks?

by InvestingMetricsThought Leadership

They say a great way to lose money is to open a restaurant. Costs, pricing pressures, and low barriers to entry tend to eat into your capital. Dad pun intended. Food, rent and labor inflation are stubborn and every extra dollar counts. All costs matter. Some restaurants make it work and build lasting brands with solid returns on capital, but those are outliers. Healthcare costs are typically a top 3-4 expense but for some industries, they may matter more than others. Costs understandably vary b ...

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Can Healthcare Savings Move Stocks?

by InvestingMetrics

The proverbial healthcare industry graveyards and nursing homes are full of companies with good intentions and lots of data. Promises to track our steps and make us healthy have done little. Predictive models tell us that we're 10% more likely to have an adverse healthcare outcome in 5 years. Yawn. Healthcare exchanges and defined contributions were supposed to unleash choice, consumerism--as were high deductibles. Stale broker relationships mean business as usual. I've written how The Chees ...

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May’s Index

by Index

This month's index covers housing inflation in San Francisco, airline costs, tulip prices relative to wages, and a potpourri of numbers on healthcare. Housing units in San Francisco in 1980: 316,608 Housing units in 2014: 386,610 Relative growth per year: <1% Median monthly rent in San Francisco for a one bedroom apartment: $3,700 Monthly rent for a one bedroom apartment in 1980 based on 2015 prices: $1,376 Dollars spent in 2018 by Southwest Airlines on jet fuel: $4.6B Dollars spent in ...