Weekly Wrap: What You Need to Know About Medicare, Dividend Stocks, and Sustainable Strategies in 2022

Editor's Picks

5 Ways to Improve Medicare Medicare is a significant public policy achievement, but it's time for some urgently needed reforms.

27 Stocks and Fund Picks Based on 2022 Experts' Forecasts Experts think international stocks are attractive. Here are some of Morningstar's best ideas for non-U.S. equity exposure.

Why Sustainable Strategies Outperformed in 2021 The most sustainable names helped ESG outpace the market, even without a lift from energy stocks.

Investors Turn to Bonds and International Stocks In 2021, these fund categories pulled in investor dollars.

How to Play Catch-Up With Retirement Savings Here are some strategies to consider whether you're behind at age 40 or beyond.

Do Commodities Have a Place in Your Portfolio? Commodities can be a good hedge when inflation spikes. That said, trying to time episodes of inflation is a fool's errand.

Portfolio Planning and Personal Finance With Christine Benz

Experts Forecast Stock and Bond Returns: 2022 Edition U.S. equity expectations drop further still, but most firms spy better values overseas.

How to Allocate Assets for College Savings Families must contend with competing challenges: time and high inflation.

Mutual Funds and Exchange-Traded Funds

Allocation Funds' 2021 Highlights Equities dominate, value rebounds, and a behemoth gets big inflows.

Which U.S. Equity Funds Outperformed Their Benchmark the Most? The small-cap growth benchmark gained only 2.8% in 2021, and six funds managed to best it by more than 25 percentage points.

4 New Funds on Our Radar Our analysts added these promising mutual funds and target-risk series to the Morningstar Prospects list.

How Have the Highest-Flying Stock Funds Done Lately? Not Great Funds that gained more than 100% in 2020 fell about 3% on average last year, with most badly lagging the market. This fits the historical pattern.

Buy the Unloved: 2022 Edition Big 2021 outflows may signal decent returns in the future for the large-growth, mid-growth, and world large-stock value Morningstar Categories.

AQR's Long Road Back to Average What a long, strange trip it's been.

Stocks

Has AMD's Stock Price Gotten Ahead of Itself? The chip designer is gaining share, but it's got deep-pocketed competition.

Why Alibaba's Stock Is Attractive Despite increased competition, Morningstar's analyst thinks China's e-commerce giant has new growth opportunities to tap.

Dividend-Stock Deep Dive: Picks for 2022 Morningstar's chief U.S. market strategist on dividend increases, capital allocation trends, and where to find undervalued dividend payers this year.

Stock Analyst Updates

Pressures Build Behind Bank of America's Q4 Results We think inflation pressures are feeding through from behind the scenes.

Rekenthaler Report

Why Indexing Small-Growth Stocks Hasn't Worked Bad luck is only half the reason.

How to Lose Money: Buy Digital World Acquisition Corp. The odds are stacked against public shareholders.

Sustainability Matters Larry Fink: Sustainable Investing Is About Profits, Not Taking a Stand Fink weighs in against divesting from energy stocks, touts new proxy-voting plans. Vail Resorts and Its Human Capital Management Headache Personnel problems led to crowded mountains, but Ron Baron remains a fan. The Untapped 29%: The Next Wave of Sustainable Investors How to turn interested observers into participants.

The Long View Podcast

Paula Pant: A Different Path to Financial Independence The popular podcast host discusses the evolution of the FIRE movement and how she attained financial independence without a high salary.

Commentary

Can Macroeconomics Predict Bad Financial Behavior? Cullen Roche breaks down the investor psyche and what we can learn from macroeconomics in today's investing environment.

U.S. Fund Flows Smashed Records in 2021 Investors embraced passive funds and tried to counter inflation.

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