Happy Thursday and welcome to our Investing 101 chat! We have Kiplinger's Executive Editor Manny Schiffres and Senior Associate Editor Nellie Huang on hand taking your questions today.
Hi everyone! Thanks for tuning in.
Hi everyone from chilly DC
Any question is a good question
Thanks for joining us today, Manny and Nellie.
While we wait for people to get their questions in, Nellie, what can you tell us about the outlook for investing overseas?
Maybe we should start with the domestic outlook
Sure, we can start with the domestic outlook.
In our January story, we focus on our 2014 outlook and we're still positive on the U.S. market, despite it's big gains over the past 12 months.
In brief, a better economy accompanied by somewhat higher long-term interest rates as the Fed begins to taper its bond buying program and another decent year for the stock market. We're forecasting 8 to 12% returns
We expect stronger economic and corporate growth (than the year before) and improving investor sentiment
Of course, 8 to 12% is gonna look like chump change compared with this year's nearly 30% return for the S&P 500, but it's still awfully good compared with inflation and what you're likely to get from bonds
The U.S. market outperformed international markets by far last year. And emerging markets were kind of a disaster--well, they were basically flat. But we see bright spots in Europe and other developed markets.
