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The articles section on CSM Expat Financial Planning's website offers comprehensive coverage on topics pertinent to expatriates and their financial planning needs.
The blog features detailed insights on personal financial protection, including life assurance, critical illness, and medical insurance. Investment-related content addresses global economic issues, investment trends, ESG factors, and the state of financial markets. The primary aim of these articles is to keep expatriates informed, enabling them to make well-informed financial planning decisions.
Filed in: Economy |Investment
17 December 2024
The above chart provides a comprehensive snapshot of US stock market valuations, examining how current stock prices relate to company earnings across different market sectors.
At first glance, stocks appear expensive, trading at 19.1x earnings (meaning investors are paying $19.10 for every $1 of company earnings).
However, this number tells a more nuanced story than simply being an indicator of overvaluation.
Filed in: Investment |Economy
21 November 2024
The chart highlights a fundamental principle of long-term investing: valuation matters.
Over short periods, market returns are influenced by a multitude of factors, including economic cycles, interest rates, and investor sentiment. As a result, the starting P/E ratio has minimal impact on one-year returns, making short-term performance difficult to predict and often unrelated to valuation.
Filed in: Momentum |Investment |Pensions |Savings |Economy
29 October 2024
The MOVE index measures the implied volatility in the US Treasury market, capturing market expectations of future price movements in US Treasuries based on the pricing of one-month Treasury options - learn why this is important.
Filed in: Momentum |Investment |Pensions |Savings |Economy
15 October 2024
This article discusses the performance of defensive stocks compared to the global equity index since late 2021. Despite initial outperformance during market downturns, defensive stocks have underperformed by about 8% overall. This underperformance is attributed to rising interest rates and the dominance of AI-related stocks.
However, changing market conditions may favour defensive stocks in the future.
Filed in: Momentum |Investment |Pensions |Savings |Economy
08 October 2024
In a dramatic turn of events that caught global markets by surprise, Chinese equities have staged their most powerful rally since the 2008 financial crisis. This surge, triggered by Beijing's bold monetary stimulus package, has reignited investor interest in the world's second-largest economy.
Filed in: Momentum |Investment |Pensions |Savings |Economy
17 September 2024
What exactly is investment value? A Google search suggests a common theme - buying stocks that are trading below their true worth or appear underpriced on some form of fundamental basis, but is this definitive?