Posts

The Overlooked Risk for Long‑Term Investors: Inflation’s Power

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By: Oliver Rahman One important factor in investing that long‑term holders often overlook is inflation’s power. I built a small simulation (non-Monte Carlo) to model how net worth grows over time when you factor in monthly contributions, market volatility, and inflation. The interesting part was seeing the difference between nominal growth (what your portfolio says on paper) and real growth (what your money is actually worth after inflation). The gap gets larger over a longer period of time. This graph displays compound growth over 20 years with inflation randomly generated each year between 1.5% and 3% (conservative to moderate assumption). It's a good reminder that compounding works both ways. Your investments compound, but so does inflation. So, if you enter in values such as 10% growth a year, factoring in inflation to make that growth 8% will give you real values, and help you prepare for your future financial goals/retirement with more confidence! Big thanks to Jason Krzymia...

Markets Snap Back! Why Today’s Rally Was Inevitable

By:  Oliver Rahman Why did the markets rise? To day, the markets rallied back and have nearly recovered all the losses in the past week for most indexes. With some such as the Dow Jones (DJI) breaking records finally hitting 50,000. But why have they risen so much today? The main reason comes down to investors realizing the tech selloff was overblown. Investors were afraid of AI-related disruption such as ai replacing software companies' revenue and new AI entrants could undercut incumbents. There was also increased capital expenditures (capex) on new data centers, cloud expansion, and GPUs. While this scared many investors on Wednesday and Thursday, by Friday most investors realized that the market was oversold, and the market has therefore corrected itself. Crypto has also made a comeback, with bitcoin rising 9% and Ethereum rising 8% today. More investors realized that the capex being posted are typical for a growth cycle. Recent labor data was also not extremely terrible, caus...

Kevin Warsh: Trump’s Fed Chair Nominee and What His Policies Could Mean for Markets

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  By: Oliver Rahman Who exactly is Kevin Warsh? A few days ago, Donald Trump nominated Kevin Warsh to lead the Federal Reserve and an increasingly polarizing Federal Open Market Committee once Jerome Powell (the current fed chairman) term ends in May. Kevin Warsh has a long history with the fed and has different viewpoints on policies for the future of the department. Kevin Warsh believes in policies such as higher fed rates, being more hawkish on inflation risk, and emphasizing financial‑market signals more heavily, and If Kevin Warsh becomes the new fed chair, it will be a major event in modern finance for anyone holding stakes in equities/stocks. First, some positives Warsh has a few positives, for example, he was one of the few individuals in charge of handling the central bank's policy decisions from 2006-2011. During the 08' crisis, Warsh was tested under pressure to solve risks with the collapse of the financial system potentially becoming a reality. So, if there is a n...

10 Common Investing Mistakes (and how to avoid them)

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 By: Oliver Rahman I've made plenty of mistakes when I first started investing, whether it was trading too much or investing too much money in one day, I was simply inexperienced. Looking at articles, it seems like most newbie investors tend to lose money in the short run . This isn't because investing is not for them or they should quit it all together, rather simple mistakes almost everyone entering into the finance world make. After seven years in the market, I’ve seen these mistakes firsthand, both in my own portfolio and in others’. In this article, I break down the 10 most common investing mistakes beginners make, why they happen, and how to avoid them. #1: Confusing price with value Do you know the famous Warren Buffet quote: “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.” I'm betting you've heard some variation of it somewhere, and it still stands to this day. Most people chase whatever is moving instead of...

Newsletter - First Edition!

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  By: Oliver Rahman Hey guys! This is a different post than I'm sure most of you are used to, but I wanted to announce that I have helped create the first Newsletter for the Economics and Finance Society at West Chester University ! I was the Newsletter Director for this edition (and the future ones to come) so I helped guide these other members and helped them to write their own articles/designed the template.  This edition highlights the research, analysis, and insights produced by our own EFS members. Check it out with the link below! Economics & Finance Society — 1st Edition | LinkedIn

The problem with Bitcoin (and crypto in general)

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By: Oliver Rahman Bitcoin: The solution and future of finance! Crypto? Digital gold! The ultimate democratization of finance! These are some of the titles thrown around by people who love crypto and their reasons for buying it. And in truth, they are partly right. Over the last 15 years crypto has exploded onto the financial scene, becoming the interest of even large companies such as JPMorgan and BlackRock. The entire crypto industry is worth ~4.35 trillion, which makes it the 3rd most valuable asset in the world (only gold and NVIDIA are ahead). However, that's not to say there are no problems with bitcoin, and crypto in general. Factors that aren't discussed regularly include volatility, scalability and security risks that will prevent crypto from ever being a dominant currency in the world. Crypto is volatile If I came up to you today and told you If you give me all your money, I could either increase it 1000% or decrease it 90%, would you take the risk? I think its safe ...

Chrome Vs. Edge: A battle for the internet's future

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By: Oliver Rahman Here's a fun fact you probably didn't know: The Microsoft browser Edge on desktops usage has increased 12-fold over the past 5 years, peaking at an all-time high of 16.7% early last year. But what has been driving this growth? And is this the end for google chrome in the future? What is Microsoft doing right that google doesn't seem to understand. I will go over all this and more in this post and show my prediction for the future. market share of Edge over the past 10 years So, what's been driving this CRAZY growth? There are a few general things that are causing the switch and these are: Speed Battery life More built-in features Benefits While some of these might seem obvious, others might surprise you and might even save you money! let's go down the list: 1 & 2 Speed and battery life Up first, surprisingly, is speed! But not for everyone. Lots of tests have been conducted recently and what people found out is that edge is better utilizing re...