In this episode of Motley Fool Money, Motley Fool personal finance expert Robert Brokamp lays out the five steps to contributing to a backdoor Roth IRA and highlights a landmine to avoid. Also in this episode:
- The stock market posted one of its best 10-day returns — what does history say happens next?
- A new study finds that heirs spend inheritances remarkably quickly. What are ways to leave an inheritance that won’t be squandered?
- The input costs for food companies almost doubled in March, and prices may rise even more over the next three to six months.
- Happy 50th birthday to Vanguard’s S&P 500 index fund, the first index fund available to individual investors.
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This podcast was recorded on April 25, 2026.
Robert Brokamp: Getting money in a Roth IRA through the backdoor and the Amazing Inheritance Disappearing Act. That and more on this Saturday’s Personal Finance edition of Motley Fool Money. I’m Robert Brokamp, and this week, I’m going to lay out the five steps to contributing to a backdoor Roth IRA and highlight a couple of potential land mines you definitely want to avoid.
But first, let’s look at some headlines from this past week or so. The stock market has shaken off the concerns of war and rising oil prices, and is now near all-time highs. In fact, S&P 500 recently posted a 9.8% 10-day rally. According to the Carson Group, this was the 20th-best 10-day return for the index since 1950. What happened a year after the other 19? Well, the market earned a positive return in 16 of those instances, with the three instances of stocks being down a year later, all occurring during the dot-com crash of the early 2000s. The median 12-month return after all of those 19 essentially double-digit 10-day rallies was 20.8%.
The Facts versus Feelings podcast, the Carson Group’s Ryan Detrick, a previous guest on our show, pointed out that the market hitting new highs in April has nearly the same frequency as those exceptional rallies, it having happened 19 times. In all but one of those instances, the market ended the year in positive territory. As Ryan pointed out, a lot of this is just fun with numbers and not necessarily information you would use to make investing decisions, but the reasons underpinning the rally, namely growing corporate earnings and high profit margins, are good signs.
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