Money Management

Costco can be a snacker’s haven. Read on to learn about a new item that recently hit the shelves. 

If you’re a self-proclaimed big-time snacker, then a Costco membership can be both a blessing and a curse. On the positive side, buying snacks at Costco could mean racking up a lower credit card tab in the process compared to doing your snack shopping at a big-box store or a regular supermarket. On the less positive side, if you tend to have trouble with portion control, buying a bag containing 27 servings of potato chips probably isn’t the best way to go.

But either way, you have to hand it to Costco — its selection of snacks is quite impressive. And recently, Costco added a new item to its lineup that fans are already raving about.

How does a bag of Reese’s Dipped Animal Crackers sound to you?

If you’re a hard core salty snack lover who doesn’t tend to dabble in chocolate, then this latest Costco offering may not appeal to you. But if you’re someone with a major sweet tooth, then you may want to head over to your local Costco store and see if Reese’s Dipped Animal Crackers have hit the shelves.

Eat This, Not That! reports that Reese’s Dipped Animal Crackers are the latest snack to make an appearance at Costco, and they’ve gotten their share of positive reviews so far. If you’re not sure what these entail, imagine your basic animal cracker covered in peanut butter and then smothered in milk chocolate.

Initial customer reviews say that this new product is “extremely addictive” and “amazing.” So that’s pretty encouraging to hear.

You have options outside of Costco

Some Costco food product offerings are exclusive to the warehouse club giant itself. That doesn’t happen to be the case with Reese’s Dipped Animal Crackers, though. You can find them at other major retail chains like Target and Walmart.

But if you want to save money in the course of trying out Reese’s Dipped Animal Crackers, then it pays to head over to Costco if you already have a membership. Chances are, you’ll be able to snag these at a lower price point on a per-ounce basis.

Of course, you’ll also generally be limited to buying a bulk-size bag. And again, that’s a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you want to look at it.

But if you want to reduce your chances of consuming a bulk pack of Reese’s Dipped Animal Crackers in one sitting, when you bring your bag home, flip it over to see how many individual portions it’s supposed to contain. From there, divide your goodies up into individual snack bags and bust them out one at a time.

Unlike Costco bakery items, which generally have a limited shelf life and have to be consumed quickly or otherwise stored in the freezer, these Reese’s Dipped Animal Crackers should have more staying power. That said, fans report that they’re delicious frozen, so you may want to stick them in your freezer regardless. That way, they’ll really last as long as you want them to.

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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Maurie Backman has positions in Target. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Costco Wholesale, Target, and Walmart. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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A major insurer is pulling out of the Florida market. Read on to see why that’s bad news for Florida residents. 

What happened

Farmers Insurance will stop offering insurance coverage in Florida, which will affect about 100,000 customers in the Sunshine State.

So what

Florida is known as an extreme weather hotspot in the U.S., with an elevated frequency of hurricanes and other high-risk weather. As such, insurers in the state take on a higher probability of having to pay out on policies, and Farmers is taking this step to manage their exposure to risk.

Farmers Insurance says that its decision to stop offering homeowners and other insurance products is necessary to manage its exposure to risk. This change, however, won’t affect Florida customers covered by a Farmers-owned subsidiary.

“Such policies will continue to be available to serve the insurance needs of Floridians,” Farmers Insurance spokesperson Trevor Chapman said in a statement, according to CNN. “Affected customers will receive notifications detailing when their coverage will end and will be advised of options for replacement coverage.”

Now what

Over the past 18 months, 15 homeowners insurance companies have put a hold on writing new policies in Florida, while four carriers have announced plans to leave the market. Meanwhile, seven insurance companies serving Florida have been declared insolvent.

The departure of Farmers Insurance only makes it more difficult for Florida residents to get the coverage they need. Even though Farmers only insures about 2% of Florida residents, as choices for coverage get whittled down, homeowners will likely be looking at higher premium rates that they’ll have to settle for due to a lack of options.

Of course, Florida isn’t the only state Farmers is taking a more cautious approach to. It recently announced plans to limit new homeowners insurance policies in California due to wildfire risks.

All told, Florida residents may need to brace for higher insurance costs across the board. But it may be possible to mitigate some of those costs — and storm-related damage — by securing homes against hurricanes and major weather events. Storm doors and shutters, for example, can go a long way toward preventing wind damage, and installing them could lead to lower insurance rates.

Florida homeowners whose insurance coverage isn’t renewed are required to get 120 days of notice from their insurers, so in the coming weeks, many people will likely hear from Farmers along these lines. Those in that situation should begin shopping around for new insurance as quickly as possible to ensure that they don’t face a gap in coverage. That could be financially catastrophic in the event of property damage, whether from a storm or otherwise.

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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Belief in a Summer Stock Rally lingers. Here’s what we can learn from this myth. 

In October 2022, the stock market officially fell into a bear market, meaning it was down 20% from its most recent high. The market remained in hibernation for 164 long days. By early June, the market had rebounded by 20%, pushing it back into bull market territory. Days later, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that inflation had cooled to 4%, the lowest inflation rate in two years.

Some refer to the bounce as a Summer Rally. According to the myth of the Summer Rally, the Dow Jones industrials hit bottom sometime during May and June, only to close higher in July, August, or September. Tales of a Summer Rally have been repeated so often that entire sales pitches are built on the notion.

Here, we’ll look at what all this means for you.

They’re right, sometimes

Between mid-June and mid-August 2022, it was easy to believe the Summer Rally was more than a myth. After all, the S&P 500 soared by more than 17%, and the Nasdaq-100 rallied by nearly 23%. Brokers were more popular than ever.

However, that’s not always the case. According to a fundamental analysis by WallStreetZen, the worst months for the Dow Jones Industrial Average are June, August, and September. In other words, all but one summer month, leading to one conclusion: Even if a Summer Rally were guaranteed, there would be no way to predict which month it would hit. You could easily believe your investments were at their peak in June, only to sell before they hit their true high.

What the myth of a Summer Rally teaches us

Who among us would not love to know when the market is about to dip? How much easier would investing be if we knew when a stock was about to soar into the stratosphere? Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works. The Summer Rally teaches us that we can look for patterns, but we can’t count on them to guide us.

What we can be sure of is that history has rewarded those who buy and hold. Those who invest with the goal of letting it ride, accepting that there will be highs and lows, are the ones who’ve prospered throughout history.

Over the past 50 years, the S&P 500 has produced an average annualized return of 9.4%. And considering all that has occurred over those 50 years, the results have been remarkable. In addition to wars in Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq, there have been numerous corporate bankruptcies and breakups, the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, the resignation of a U.S. president, and seven recessions.

Through it all, there have been (sometimes huge) drops in the stock market, but there have been even larger gains. Attempting to time our investments rarely works the way we hope it will. When the investment firm Merrill Lynch looked at model portfolios, it found that over 30 years, market-timing portfolios routinely underperformed buy-and-hold portfolios.

The takeaway

Don’t be surprised if you hear someone say how important it is for you to get in on the Summer Rally. It’s a myth that seems to stick around. When you hear that advice, remember the value of investing in companies you believe in and allowing your investment to ride through both good times and when the market takes a hit. Statistically speaking, you are likely to come out ahead.

Moving money from our checking account to a brokerage can be scary for some of us. If you find yourself paralyzed by indecision, talk to your broker about boosting your bond allocation to reduce risk. And if you’re worried that you’ll miss a huge bounce in the market, make it a habit to invest regularly so that whenever an upswing hits, you’ll have skin in the game.

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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Dana George has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Understanding how to value companies requires knowing more than the price per share. Here’s why. 

There are many different ways to pick stocks to buy. Every stock broker probably has their own methodology for which stocks to buy and when. And even amateur investors can try to find undervalued stocks to pick up a bargain.

But while the share price of a given company is indicative of a lot of things, it’s not the end-all-be-all number that some folks may think it is. For one thing, stock prices are rarely a good way to gauge the actual value of a given company.

Share price does not equal company value

An example used recently by YouTube finance guru Humphrey Yang gives a good look at this phenomenon. At the time of his video, Apple was trading at $136 a share, and Facebook was trading at $277 — more than double.

As Yang points out, some folks might assume that the difference in stock prices means Facebook is actually the more valuable company. Unfortunately for them, they’d be wrong. Here’s how Yang explains it:

“Since Apple has 17.1 billion shares on the market, and Facebook only has 2.4 billion, the actual market value of Apple is four times that of Facebook,” he says. “Share price rarely means anything. For Apple, you need $969 worth of Apple to get the same ownership as one share of Facebook.”

In other words, the share price is only one part of the value equation. The number of shares in circulation is also a big part of the calculation. In the above case, Apple has more than seven times the shares Facebook has, so even with share prices half as high, the overall value of Apple is significantly more than Facebook.

Of course, you can’t go the other way and judge a company entirely by number of shares, either. If Company A has twice as many shares as Company B, but Company B’s price-per-share is twice as high, the two companies would be of equal value.

Getting a small slice of many companies

These details are just a few of the things that can make it hard to successfully profit off of buying stock for individual companies. There are just so many variables — most of which require a lot of research and experience to even begin to predict (and even then, it’s exceptionally difficult).

That’s why the majority of experts — including Yang himself — recommend that most folks stick with investments like index funds. Essentially, an index is a “list” of a segment of the market. An index fund is an investment portfolio that buys stock in all of the companies in that index.

For example, the S&P 500 Index is a market index that tracks the largest 500 publicly traded companies in the U.S. An S&P 500 index fund would invest a little bit into all 500 companies in the S&P 500 Index.

So, instead of buying stock in individual companies, you can use your favorite online stock broker to buy shares of an index fund. This gives you a little slice of many companies, all with a single buy.

Index funds offer built-in diversification, so you don’t have that same risk of going broke if a single company goes belly-up. More importantly, your portfolio will very likely perform better without your interference. Reports have found that index funds actually do better in the long run than the vast majority of actively managed funds.

A hobby account for your individual investments

For some people, investing is more than a way to build wealth; it’s a hobby they enjoy. If that’s you, then perhaps it might be worthwhile to grab an easy-to-use investing app and open up an account separate from the rest of your portfolio. (Look around for a good new customer bonus and you can even get some free stock.)

Put a little “fun money” into this account, and use it to invest directly in the companies you think might do well — while leaving your retirement accounts more prudently invested. This way, you can practice the skills you need to navigate the market before getting your entire portfolio involved. (FYI, this is also the method I suggest to folks who want to dip their toes into crypto investing. You can even get some free crypto with most apps.)

Our best stock brokers

We pored over the data and user reviews to find the select rare picks that landed a spot on our list of the best stock brokers. Some of these best-in-class picks pack in valuable perks, including $0 stock and ETF commissions. Get started and review our best stock brokers.

We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Brittney Myers has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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