Last week, ProPublica released a story that showed a prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneur’s Roth IRA is worth around $5 billion. Yes, that is billion with a “B”, which is about 833,333 $6,000 annual IRA contributions, if you are curious how many years you would have to save to get that much in your IRA.
Death, Taxes, and Death Taxes
…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
— Ben Franklin
The quote above, attributed to Ben Franklin, is a well-known excerpt from a letter to French scientist Jean-Baptiste Leroy in 1789 where he discussed the new Constitution that had recently been adopted in the United States.
President Joe Biden has proposed plans in his first few months in office that may pair those events even more so than Franklin may have imagined.
Q1 2021 Market Review
Equity markets marched steadily higher in the first quarter of 2021. Extreme volatility from a handful of “meme stocks” occupied headlines with social media brigades hyping out of favor companies such as Gamestop. While the idea of small investors sticking it to big greedy hedge funds makes for good media quotes (i.e. “You only live once!”), it was the energy and financial sectors that were the best performers overall and led the stock charge.