Personal Finance

Investing in real estate can be a good way to diversify your assets. But if you don’t want the responsibilities that come with ownership, real estate investment trusts (REITs) can provide exposure to real estate without requiring you to actually buy or sell property.

On many measures of financial capability, U.S. adults generally fared better in 2021 than in the decade leading up to the pandemic, according to the FINRA Investor Education Foundation’s National Financial Capability Study. However, the research also shows that Americans’ financial well-being remains uneven across different demographic groups.

Some companies and recruiters use online job sites and video technologies as a convenient and cost-effective way to communicate with applicants. Unfortunately, fraudsters are using them too, and they aren’t looking to offer you a job.

A diversified portfolio tends to be harder to achieve than simply following the mantra to steer clear of putting all your investment eggs in one basket. This basic strategy can help, but it’s often not enough to avoid concentration risk—the risk of amplified losses that may occur from having a large portion of your holdings in a particular investment, asset class or market segment relative to your overall portfolio.

The first step in managing concentration risk is to understand how it might occur. Concentration can be the result of a number of factors:

When thinking about investing, one consideration is whether to invest funds all at once or over a period of time. If you choose the latter route, you might be opting for an investment strategy called dollar-cost averaging.

With dollar-cost averaging, you invest your money in equal portions, at regular intervals, regardless of the ups and downs in the market.

Volatile markets can inspire feelings of fear and anxiety among investors. Market surges and sags can occur for any number of reasons, including inflation fears, trade policy concerns, tax breaks, economic optimism, global events or a recession watch. When the stock market gets rocky, focusing on your overall financial picture, combined with sound planning, can pay dividends.

These five steps can help steady your pulse during market spikes and elevate your financial security:

April is Financial Literacy Month! To mark the occasion, FINRA is highlighting actions you can take to boost financial capability—both your own and that of others you care about.

Exchange-traded products (ETPs), including exchange-traded funds (ETFs), commodity pools and exchange-traded notes (ETNs), are a popular way to invest, with thousands of different products available to target almost every imaginable investment objective. With such a wide variety of products available it’s important to remember that not all ETPs are the same.

The ways in which people communicate have changed with advancements in technology, and so have the tactics of “cold calling” boiler rooms.

It's a fantasy that may resonate with people of a certain era: swimming in a vault piled nearly to the ceiling with glittering gold bullion. This was a regular pastime of the cartoon character Scrooge McDuck in the late 1980s animated classic "Duck Tales."

It’s a scene that has led some to consider Scrooge McDuck one of the richest fictional characters. Of course, for most real investors, amassing and storing swimming pool-size portions of gold is impossible.