MW How to help your child transition to financial adulthood

By Philip van Doorn

Also in Weekend Reads: A surprising stock market, jobs running counter to the AI trend, Micron's cycle and advice from the Moneyist

The clock is ticking - your children will someday take control of their money, and you can prepare them well in advance.

State laws vary, but if you have a Uniform Transfers to Minors Act, or UTMA, account for your child, at some point you will need to put the account directly in their name, typically after they turn 21.

In the Fix My Portfolio column, Beth Pinsker shared her own experience and offered advice on how to prepare your children to take control of their money.

How you can grow more wealth by doing less

Here is advice on how to manage an investment portfolio from Mark Hulbert, based on a fascinating study.

More from Hulbert: Why the 60/40 portfolio is crushing it - despite market chaos and inflation fears

Related: 'The S&P 500 seems to be doing particularly well': I'm 66. Is this a good time to invest $100,000 in the stock market?

The hot stock market

Based on late-morning trading on Friday, the S&P 500 SPX was up 7.9% for 2026. Joe Adinolfi explained why the stock market as a whole has been so strong this year, which might be a surprise for investors considering the conflict in Iran, the dramatic increase in gasoline prices and the fear of AI-driven layoffs.

Read: This new target for the S&P 500 is very nearly Wall Street's highest. Here are the trades to make.

Related: Stocks at all-time highs can still go higher. Here's one case for buying into the rally.

Is AI coming for your job?

This week brought a wave of corporate layoff announcements tied to generative artificial intelligence. The theme among executives announcing drastic staff cuts has been a streamlining of workflows as employees use agentic AI.

Then again, you might be surprised at some of the fastest-growing job titles for university graduates listed by Venessa Wong in this week's Help My Career column.

More career help: Middle managers are on the chopping block thanks to AI in the workplace. Here's how to save your job.

Have this little talk before the big move-in

Don't Short Yourself - MarketWatch's new weekly newsletter - offers smart tips to help you earn and grow your money.

In this week's Don't Short Yourself newsletter, Genna Contino outlined four essential conversations about money that couples need to have before moving in together.

More from Genna Contino:

-- Just graduated? Here's your financial cheat sheet for building real wealth.

-- 'It's money in the bank every week': With gas prices over $4.50 a gallon, seven EV drivers tell us they have no regrets

Attractive Treasury bond yields and bond-market timing

Early on Friday, 10-year U.S. Treasury notes BX:TMUBMUSD10Y were yielding 4.35%, up from 4.17% at the end of last year. Meanwhile, 20-year Treasury bonds BX:TMUBMUSD20Y were yielding 4.92% and 30-year Treasury bonds BX:TMUBMUSD30Y were yielding 4.94%. Those yields are nothing to sneeze at, considering that federal paper is exempt from state and local income taxes.

An individual New York City resident with annual taxable income ranging from $80,651 to $215,400 is subject to a 6% state income tax and a 3.876% city income tax. For a married couple, that income range would be $161,551 to $323,200, as summarized by NerdWallet.

So if we divide the 4.92% yield on 20-year Treasury bonds by 1 minus a combined New York state and city income-tax rate of 9.876%, we have a fully taxable-equivalent yield of 5.46%.

Joy Wiltermuth explained why the federal government's borrowing costs might keep rising.

When bond yields rise, their market values fall and vice versa. If you hold a bond until maturity, you won't be affected by this price fluctuation - you know you will receive the bond's face value at maturity. But long-term investors might want to keep their options open. Together with Joseph Adinolfi, Joy explained how a long-term trading pattern of buying 30-year Treasury bonds whenever yields are close to 5% has worked out well, and how it may play out from here.

Easy bond investing: I-bonds are the best place to put your cash right now - and that should worry you

More: Here's the 'hero' trade that works if the Treasury radically restructures debt, according to Jeffrey Gundlach

Can the stock-price action really be 'different this time' for Micron?

Check out this 10-year price chart for Micron $(MU)$:

Micron's stock has soared over the past 10 years, but long-term investors have needed to be patient through periods of volatility.

That is a beautiful chart, but a close look underscores not only the volatility of the semiconductor industry, but the varying cycles within Micron's niche - computer memory chips. For example, if you had purchased the stock at the close on June 18, 2024, you would have been down 58% at the close on April 4, 2025.

In what might be a reflection of the historical volatility and a wariness among investors, Micron's stock trades at a forward price/earnings valuation of 8.1. This valuation - the stock's price divided by the consensus 12-month earnings-per-share estimate among analysts polled by LSEG - compares with a weighted forward P/E of 20.8 for the S&P 500.

Micron's stock has soared 149% this year amid high demand for its memory chips, which are being installed by data centers along with Nvidia's (NVDA) graphics processing units to support AI. Emily Bary explained why some analysts expect this cycle for Micron's business and its stock to be different from previous ones.

Related: The AI bubble isn't bursting - Why the capital-spending boom has room to run

More coverage from the MarketWatch technology team:

-- Intel's stock just had its most explosive growth ever. Why skeptics are piling on.

-- Datadog's stock is soaring. Here's how the company became such a crucial AI player.

-- Rocket Lab's stock rises upon new signs its business is expanding rapidly

-- CoreWeave shares plunge. Revenue doubles but AI costs are rising.

The Moneyist addresses the Social Security imbalance

Quentin Fottrell is the Moneyist.

Remedies to the imbalance of the Social Security program will obviously need to include a combination of benefit cuts and tax increases.

Quentin Fottrell - the Moneyist - answered MarketWatch readers' questions related to Social Security's perceived problems and possible remedies:

-- 'We're worried the honey pot will run dry': Does the government borrow from my Social Security to fund federal programs?

-- 'I always did the graveyard shift': I worked for 54 years. Why on earth would I wait to claim Social Security at 70?

-- My mother regrets paying Social Security. She says she should have invested her contributions. I disagree. Who's right?

More from the Moneyist:

-- I'm giving $10,000 to my stepchildren. My wife warned me against gifts of equal value for my nephews. Is that fair?

-- My husband has a $225,000 pension. We don't trust his 'too big to fail' employer. Where do we invest it?

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-Philip van Doorn

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May 08, 2026 12:42 ET (16:42 GMT)

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