Opal Capital's Wicker: The impact of today's headlines will be short-lived

Wayne Wicker, president of Opal Capital, says investors "are bombarded every day with news items," and while those things are interesting, they're also "meaningless" for most people with a long-term horizon. He suggests "looking through the noise," and notes that in the cacophony of current events, he sees opportunities in mid-cap stocks and in some areas and individual issues where the market has overreacted in recent weeks.

Personal finance journalist Brian O'Connor discusses the importance of looking more deeply into target-date funds — a default-choice investment that most investors pick without giving it much thought — noting that the way those funds work could leave investors subject to significant sequence-of-return risk, particularly if they are Baby Boomers planning to retire soon. O'Connor, who wrote about the subject in a recent New York Times piece, isn't saying investors should avoid target-date funds but instead advocates for a level of management and involvement that many users don't normally apply to these one-size-fits-all portfolios.

Geoff Garbacz, principal at Quantitative Partners, discusses how record levels of short interest are changing the market broadly and the prospects for a lot of stocks, as he goes both long and short in the Market Call.