investing basics

Money and Inspiration Weekly Notes cover for July 4, 2026, covering strong year to date returns for the major stock indexes despite recent volatility, Meta’s pivot to selling AI cloud compute as a response to the Magnificent Seven capex selloff, and two inspirational stories of impossible feats accomplished this week.

Weekly Notes — July 4, 2026

Happy Fourth of July weekend. Some quick housekeeping before we get started. The U.S. stock market was closed Friday for the Fourth of July holiday, so this week’s official close is Thursday July 2. On to the notes. I  will…

Money and Inspiration Weekly Notes cover for June 27, 2026, covering the Nasdaq Composite's five-day losing streak driven by chip stocks, SpaceX's July 7 addition to the Nasdaq 100 index and what that means for passive index investors, and the Iran ceasefire that fell apart before reaching implementation.

Weekly Notes — June 27, 2026

Quick note before we get started. This was a very tough week personally. Some hard news on the medical front along with some other challenges. It will never compare to the bad week, weeks, months and years when Isabella passed…

Money and Inspiration Weekly Notes cover for June 20, 2026, covering the Nasdaq's round-trip week from Iran deal optimism through a hawkish Federal Reserve dot plot to a chip-led recovery, plus continuing analysis of SpaceX's first week as a public stock.

Weekly Notes — June 20, 2026

Quick housekeeping note before we get started. The U.S. stock market was closed Friday for Juneteenth, so this week’s closing prices are Thursday’s. The week was four trading days long. That actually fits the story it tells. Let’s get into…

Money and Inspiration Weekly Notes cover for June 13, 2026, covering SpaceX's record-breaking $75 billion IPO, Alphabet's $80 billion equity raise with Berkshire's $10 billion commitment, and a week of headline-driven market volatility.

Weekly Notes — June 13, 2026

This was a wild week. The market swung in both directions on news that mostly was not about the companies whose stocks were moving. Alphabet’s record stock issuance from last week kept teaching its lesson. And on Friday, the largest…

Money and Inspiration Weekly Notes cover for June 6, 2026, covering the AI rally pullback, Broadcom's drop on great earnings, the worst Nasdaq day in over a year, and the Cerebras update.

Weekly Notes — June 6, 2026

This week the AI rally finally took a real punch to the gut which it does from time to time. The priced-in lesson we have discussed on this site scaled all the way up from individual stocks to the whole…

Weekly Notes — May 30, 2026

This week the AI rally got bigger, the rules from last week kept proving themselves, and the Cerebras story I started telling last Saturday continued in a way worth watching. Three items, all connected. Let’s get into it. 1. The…

Hand moving a chess piece above a chessboard beside financial news and market charts, symbolizing strategic stock selling decisions.

When to Sell a Stock

In How Many Stocks Should You Actually Own?, we covered how to build a portfolio of individual stocks. Now comes the question that experienced investors often say is harder than buying — when should you sell? Selling is one of…

Money and Inspiration Weekly Notes cover for May 23, 2026, covering NVIDIA earnings, the Cerebras IPO, and the cost of FOMO.

Weekly Notes — May 23, 2026

Welcome to Weekly Notes. This is the first one, so a quick word on what it is. Once a week — Saturdays — I’ll pull together a couple of things that caught my eye in money and markets, and try…

Comparison of a concentrated stock portfolio versus a diversified portfolio using investment baskets

How Many Stocks Should You Actually Own?

In How to Research a Stock Before You Buy It, we covered the basics of figuring out whether a company is worth owning. Once you start putting that knowledge to work, the next question is — how many stocks should…

How to Research a Stock Before You Buy It

In my last post, ETFs and Index Funds vs Individual Stocks, we talked about when it makes sense to start adding individual stocks to your portfolio. If you have decided you are ready to take that step, the natural next…

Hand lifting a basket of diversified investment sectors representing an ETF

What Is An ETF? A Simple Beginner’s Guide

If you have started saving money — or are starting to think about it — or are sitting on money you have been afraid to invest — the next question is simple: What do you actually do with that money?…