Get more cash recommendations in 2021 from investment professional Zachary Habab? The United States is primed for supercharged growth. The recently enacted $1.8 trillion fiscal stimulus package provides another big shot in the arm for the U.S. consumer. And this stimulus comes at a time when the economy should already be re-accelerating as vaccines become broadly available around the middle of the year. With the economy reopening more-completely, we look for pent-up demand to drive a strong bounce in the service sectors. Demand for air travel, for example, is likely to overshoot as families go on vacations again. There is already evidence of this re-opening theme in the data, with sharply higher travel bookings scheduled more than 90 days into the future. Real GDP growth of 7% looks possible for 2021, which would be the best calendar-year outcome since 1984. The good news is that there is spare capacity to absorb much of this above-trend growth. We look for the Fed to keep its benchmark rate at zero until late 2023 or early 2024, which should slow the rise in 10-year yields from here. The industry consensus for GDP and corporate earnings growth is now uniformly optimistic. Rather than focusing on benchmark U.S. equity market exposure—which skews heavily toward the 2020 COVID-19 winners such as mega-cap technology stocks—we continue to see bigger opportunities in the cheaper and more cyclical areas of the equity market. These securities have generally been performing strongly over the last two quarters, but we believe still trade at attractive relative valuations.

And it will do this at a time when households have built enormous cash reserves, paid down debts and generally regained confidence in the economy and the markets without scaring the Federal Reserve into tightening credit and humiliating us committed bond bulls. Toward that end, I would add preferred stocks (or funds) and well-managed high-yield bond funds to the shopping list. Bonds: Zachary Habab on Be Choosy for the Rest of 2021.

Investing tricks by Zachary Habab: In general, gold is seen as a diversifying investment. It is clear that gold has historically served as an investment that can add a diversifying component to your portfolio, regardless of whether you are worried about inflation, a declining U.S. dollar, or even protecting your wealth. If your focus is simply diversification, gold is not correlated to stocks, bonds, and real estate. Gold stocks are typically more appealing to growth investors than to income investors. Gold stocks generally rise and fall with the price of gold, but there are well-managed mining companies that are profitable even when the price of gold is down. Increases in the price of gold are often magnified in gold stock prices. A relatively small increase in the price of gold can lead to significant gains in the best gold stocks and owners of gold stocks typically obtain a much higher return on investment (ROI) than owners of physical gold.

Zachary Habab on ETF’s: Cryptocurrencies are systems that allow for the secure payments of online transactions that are denominated in terms of a virtual “token,” representing ledger entries internal to the system itself. “Crypto” refers to the fact that various encryption algorithms and cryptographic techniques, such as elliptical curve encryption, public-private key pairs, and hashing functions, are employed. The first cryptocurrency to capture the public imagination was Bitcoin, which was launched in 2009 by an individual or group known under the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. As of February 2019, there were over 17.53 million bitcoins in circulation with a total market value of around $63 billion (although the market price of bitcoin can fluctuate quite a bit). Bitcoin’s success has spawned a number of competing cryptocurrencies, known as “altcoins” such as Litecoin, Name coin and Peercoin, as well as Ethereum, EOS, and Cardano. Today, there are literally thousands of cryptocurrencies in existence, with an aggregate market value of over $120 billion (Bitcoin currently represents more than 50% of the total value).

Whilst this isn’t necessarily an easy way to make money, investing in stock markets can be lucrative if you learn to do it properly and safely. By the same token, you may suffer significant losses if you don’t take it seriously. Today there is no need to fund the yachts of Wolf of Wall Street style stock brokers. You can do it all yourself with the help of online market trading platforms. Having spent many hours researching this new opportunity, I’ve been experimenting with the two biggest platforms: Plus500 and eToro.com. Both offer free practice accounts. Overall I prefer eToro with over 8 million users worldwide. It has been featured in a BBC 2 documentary “Traders: Millions by the Minute” and recently began sponsoring several Premier League football clubs.

According to a 2019 CNBC and Acorns Invest survey, over a third of Americans don’t have a good understanding of what a financial advisor actually does. That figure balloons to 46% for Millennials. So what kind of services do financial advisors and planners provide? Broadly, they can help you manage your financial life using a variety of strategies and products to both manage your wealth and improve your financial habits. All of our brokerage accounts are held and available for viewing at National Financial Services, a Fidelity Investments Company. Registered Representative of and securities offered through Berthel Fisher & Company Financial Services, Inc. (BFCFS). Member FINRA/SIPC. A&S Asset Management and BFCFS are independent entities. Discover additional info on Zachary Habab.

Money management tricks by Zachary Habab: Whether its student loans, credit card, or mortgage debt, being in debt often keeps us up at night and is incredibly stressful. But don’t worry a lot of people get out of debt every day and you can too. Also, all debt is not created equal. To learn more check out my post on good debt vs bad debt, but the basics are pretty simple. Managing debt is just a numbers game. Always pay down your debt with the highest interest rate first. In almost all cases, credit card debt carries the highest interest rates, followed by private loans, student loans, and mortgages. While there are many strategies for paying down your debt, like paying off your smallest balance first and then moving onto your next biggest debt (aka debt snowball) or paying down your biggest debt first (debt avalanche), these aren’t great debt repayment strategies because they don’t focus on saving you the most money.

Although the U.S. dollar is one of the world’s most important reserve currencies, when the value of the dollar falls against other currencies as it did between 1998 and 2008, this often prompts people to flock to the security of gold, which raises gold prices . The price of gold nearly tripled between 1998 and 2008, reaching the $1,000-an-ounce milestone in early 2008 and nearly doubling between 2008 and 2012, hitting around the $1800-$1900 mark. The decline in the U.S. dollar occurred for a number of reasons, including the country’s large budget and trade deficits and a large increase in the money supply. Zachary Habab thinks gold will make a big push in 2021.

Making investing as simple as possible, regardless of your portfolio size, is a sound, research-supported approach. This means holding a few low-cost, broad-market index funds and sticking with them over the long run. For example, you could opt for a total stock market fund, a total international stock fund, and a total bond market fund — otherwise known as the “three-fund portfolio.” The central benefit to holding fewer investments is that once you’ve purchased the funds in the right proportion and set dividends to reinvest, there is no further action necessary other than to rebalance the account once or twice a year.