Monthly Updates

With the First Republic Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank failures in the last two months, you may understandably be concerned about the safety of your money, including your bank accounts and Fidelity investment accounts. To start, a little background may help. Fidelity Investments is one of the world’s largest and most well-respected investment […]

There are a lot of truths and lies in our industry. And often, it can be hard to discern facts from bullshit. One of the narratives echoed by several clients over my 40 years in finance has usually been stated in describing a situation where an individual stock that one owns is underwater, sometimes by […]

That disclaimer is present in some form in virtually every financial document I can think of, ranging from mutual fund prospectuses to life insurance and annuity contracts and illustrations, to the voluminous disclosure documents and annual reports of private and public real estate partnerships and private equity deals. It’s become so common, that I think […]

What a difference a year makes. A year ago at this time, all of our stock and bond market risk models had turned negative, we were in maximum protect mode, and that foreshadowed the worst calendar year for investors since 2008. Today, all but one of our stock market risk models is positive, and we’re […]

A couple of months ago, one of our clients called me to ask about moving from California to Pennsylvania to accept a job promotion. We discussed several aspects of the move, including differences in the cost of living, housing prices, distance from friends and family, climate, local culture, and, very importantly, taxes. The tax question […]

Several months ago, the yields on shorter term debt instruments began to rise above the yields of longer term debt of the same credit profile. This is unusual, as the chart below will illustrate. This is known as an inverted yield curve, and is typically associated with recessions. Why does that matter? Because bear markets […]

From the year 2000 to 2020, inflation in the United States as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) averaged well under 3%. And about 3% inflation has been pretty much the average since 1950. Nothing is forever, though, thanks to the seemingly unlimited printing press known as The Federal Reserve. As a result, inflation […]

Stocks staged a fairly impressive rally off of their mid-June lows, with the S&P 500 gaining over 17% in two months, and the NDX 100 (aka the QQQ) up nearly 23%. This had given hope from the bulls that the worst was over, and perhaps inflation was peaking. But in mid-August, virtually all major indexes […]

On the morning of January 12, 2022, I took a quick look at my checking account balance, as I do most days. Instead of seeing around $9,000 or $10,000 as I had expected, the balance staring back at me was $109.97. Huh?! There had to be some mistake. I looked at recent transactions and saw […]

This month’s headline is shameless plagiarism. When you read as much as I do, you get ideas from everywhere. In this case, it was a Fund Profile article in Barron’s on Rupal Bhansali, the portfolio manager for the Ariel International fund a couple of weeks ago. Bhansali successfully plays defense by first asking, before making […]