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Anyone newly retired or nearly so must feel like they have the worst timing in the world. A portfolio tends to be largest near retirement, just before those savings are about to be drawn down. These days, however, most portfolios have lost value; the S&P 500 is down about 20% so far this year.
The financial industry has a name for this scenario: sequence of return risk. "It matters most at retirement when you're selling assets for income," says Wade Pfau, a professor of retirement income at The American College of Financial Services in King of Prussia, Pa. "You need to sell a larger number of shares to get the same amount of money. Those shares are then gone so even if the market bounces back, your portfolio won't recover as much."
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The newly retired are particularly vulnerable because they're "relying on this pot of money to finance the next 20 to 30 years of their life," says Amit Sinha, head of multi-asset design at Voya Investment Management in New York City.
Sequence of return risk is less of a concern for someone further along in retirement because retirees typically shift to safer, more conservative investments and have fewer years to pay for. Plus, these investors may have benefited from portfolios boosted by strong returns early in retirement.
Similarly, if retirement is a decade or more away, what happens to markets today is mostly irrelevant. "You just allow the compounding to work for you and recover over those years," says Sinha.
Someone retiring now, of course, doesn't have that luxury. If this describes you, there are several things you can do to minimize the damage, but first, assess what it's likely to mean for your portfolio long term.
Depending on how you react now, t
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Disruption. It's coming for the U.S. dollar in the form of digital currency. Last week the Biden administration detailed a broad plan for adopting a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the coming years. The Departments of Energy, Commerce, the Treasury, and other agencies weighed in on how to manage and regulate a CBDC.
The government is reacting in part to the explosive growth of digital currencies. About three out of ten U.S. adults currently invest in some form of cryptocurrency, or "crypto," like Bitcoin or Ethereum. These digital "coins" rely on a decentralized network of computers to verify financial transactions, cutting out third parties like banks or credit cards.
The good, the bad, and the ugly of crypto
Advocates of crypto point to its affordability, efficiency, and its ability to reach consumers with little or no access to traditional banking services. With just a mobile phone or a crypto ATM, consumers can easily send and receive digital currency, even across international borders.
On the other hand, crypto is still largely unregulated and volatile. Investors in Bitcoin, for example, saw returns of over 70% in 2021, but the currency is down almost 60% year to date. And if you send your payment to the wrong account (called a "digital wallet") there may be no way to retrieve it. Crypto has also been used for money laundering, fraud, and to fund terrorism. Several
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