Tag - S&P 500 Index

addition and subtraction card, Sheaff Brock money managers, arithmetic of loss

Stay Invested to Help Soften the Arithmetic of Loss

The stock market, it might be said, is the greatest of teachers, but attending class isn’t always fun. One of the harshest lessons the market has to impart to investors concerns the arithmetic of loss. Quite Like medical students learning about the ravages cancer can cause, investors understand the potential of portfolio losses, yet persist in hoping the lesson applies to others, never to themselves. Fact is, as the arithmetic of loss shows, a given percentage of gain is never [...]

two puppies | the difference between SPX and SPY | Sheaff Brock

SPY and SPX—What’s the Diff and Does the Difference Matter?

In a rather cryptic and historical intro to the subject of options, Yahoo Finance states: “When it comes to the battle of SPY versus SPX, the first may have more volume, but the second has more value.” Size comparison: The SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE symbol SPY) is, in fact, the most widely traded contract on option exchanges. The SPX S&P 500 index options have far lower trading volume, but each contract is ten times the size of a SPY. Underlying security: Underlying the [...]

Sheaff Brock | S&P 500 is a measuring stick of the 500 largest US corporations

Please Welcome to the Stage…the Standard & Poor’s Index!

It’s a measuring stick, a benchmark, a way to discuss our investment markets. But what, exactly, does it DO? The S&P 500 index measures the value of the stock of the country’s 500 largest corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange or on the Nasdaq Composite. The idea? To provide investors a quick look at the stock market and the economy. And, while many investors first check the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 index is the [...]

Price Earnings Ratios as gumball machine | Sheaff Brock Investment Advisors

The P/E Might Well Prove Mightier than the Pessimism

The price earnings ratio, known as the p/e ratio for short, is a useful way to evaluate the attractiveness of a company's stock price compared to its current earnings per share. If a company is reporting earnings per share of $2, and the stock is selling for $20 per share, the p/e ratio is 10. “One potential way to know when a sector or industry is overpriced is when the average p/e ratio of all of the companies in that [...]