#pretax-income

#pretax-income

The sharp rise in oil prices and renewed inflation concerns created significant pressure on both stocks and bonds, impacting investor sentiment and market dynamics.

Most employer 401(k) plans allow mid-year changes to the deferral election percentage. Before the bonus pay period, raise the deferral rate high enough to funnel as much of the bonus as possible into the 401(k), up to the annual limit.

The key to selling underperforming holdings at a loss and using those losses to cancel out capital gains on a dollar-for-dollar basis is to bring one's capital gains level down as close as possible to zero. Additionally, it's possible to use $3,000 of capital losses per year to offset other ordinary income, so there's the potential here with such a strategy to actually lower one's overall tax burden by selling the right securities at the correct time.

Heat looks like validation, and validation looks like safety. It is hard to ignore a sector when customers start leaning forward at the same time investors do. Still, the more cycles I have lived through in competitive technology businesses, the more I see heat as an optical illusion. It sharpens whatever is easiest to notice and blurs the underlying mechanics that determine who or what holds control.

RSPA generates income through equity-linked notes (ELNs) from major financial institutions, which replicate an options overlay but limit upside potential in rising markets.

The ETF holds 50 positions, but the top two dominate in a way that makes the rest almost incidental. Johnson & Johnson carries a 25.4% weight, and Eli Lilly and Company sits at 21.4%. Together they account for roughly 46.8% of the entire fund.

It was wise of Omnicom to report its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings after the market closed on Wednesday, since its stock gained in after-hours trading - unlike Publicis, which got walloped by traders after its quite positive financial results. However, its results were neither spectacularly good nor terribly bad, with 2025 revenue up 10%, thanks in part to including one month of revenue from Interpublic Group, which it finished absorbing at the end of November. Foreign exchange values also goosed the revenue by $125 million, bringing total revenue for the year to $17.3 billion.

The emergence of so-called "agentic AI," systems that can perform tasks independently and support decisions, plays a central role in this. Two-thirds of respondents believe that there is currently more hype surrounding agentic AI than previous technological developments. At the same time, three-quarters are still discovering how this technology can be used effectively. According to Basware CEO Jason Kurtz, the time for experimentation is over; executives expect concrete results.

Earnings-call word usage shows increased emphasis on growth in Q3 versus Q2, decreased mentions of tariffs and uncertainty, and slope of highlighted words represents change in usage between quarters.

Boards have no process for developing or identifying the next generation of CFOs,