Double Your Money With The Rule Of 72

The Rule of 72 tells you how long it takes an investment to double. The number 72 is divided by the interest rate and you get a rough idea of the number of years the doubling will take. If you have $10,000 in investments and they earn 4 per cent, it will take 18 years for the $10,000 to become $20,000 (72 divided by 4 = 18).

If you know how many times the investment has doubled, you can work back to find the rate of return. A $10,000 investment that doubled to $20,000 in 18 years returned an annual rate of return of 4 per cent (72 / 18 = 4).

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Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72

S+P seventh week in a row of gains

The chase by Frances Horodelski: The history of weekly runs of positive gains on the S&P 500 isn’t particularly long. Last week, the index completed its seventh week in a row of gains. The last time the index accomplished this feat was early in 2013.

Prior to that, the last time was in 2011, but before that May 2007. As for streaks of eight weeks, Avondale Asset Management’s homework shows that there have only been eight (nice symmetry there) times that has occurred.

The last time this occurred was January 2004 (according to S&P Capital IQ). Longer streaks have been short – six times for 9 weeks, and one each for 10, 12 and 13 weeks (all data back to 1950). So we may be living on borrowed time but, while consecutive weekly streaks do end, they are usually followed more by a pause than a collapse and a series of further runs continue.

For reference, Friday marked the 37th new high this year for the S&P 500.

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