Monthly Updates

This month, I want to answer some client questions on 530A Trump Accounts, the new retirement accounts for children that officially launched this summer. They have received plenty of attention, but as is often the case with new financial rules, the details matter more than the headline. We will look at who may benefit, why […]

Songwriter Don Schlitz wrote those lyrics back in 1978 as part of his song called The Gambler, but Kenny Rogers made it famous when he recorded the song. Given today’s stock market, I couldn’t think of a better description. Inside, we’ll look at the trend in margin debt, supply and demand, upcoming seasonality, a quick […]

Since its low in March of 2009, the S&P 500 Index has gone up by a factor of nearly 11 in just over 17 years, from 676 to 7394, which doesn’t include dividends. As I and others have noted, we have a generation of “investors” who’ve never seen a meaningful market peak or a prolonged […]

A few clients have asked about Proposition 19 recently, so I thought it would be useful to revisit the topic and update what I wrote when I first covered it in 2023. Most people think of Prop 19 as an inheritance issue, and that is certainly part of it. But it can also be helpful […]

If I told you six weeks ago the price of oil would surge over 45% in a few weeks, you’d probably assume this would be bad for the stock market. It was, and then it wasn’t, as the market seems to have sensed the peak in oil was two weeks ago. More on this inside, […]

We don’t put out interim updates unless there’s really something significant going on. There is. Risk in both credit and stock markets has increased to its highest level since last April. We’re not known for brevity, but this will be. Promise. A Change In Character This past Monday, March 16, three of our models triggered […]

This month, we’re revisiting the topic of inflation and updating data we published in 2017, using our favorite breakfast joint as the guinea pig. A current look at REAL, or inflation-adjusted returns. And given the hostilities that have broken out between the U.S. and Israel and Iran, we’d be remiss not to address the implications […]

Nearly 17 years ago on March 9, 2009, the stock market bottomed, concluding a -57% drop which started in October 2007. Since then, the S&P 500 has achieved compound annual returns of about 15.19%, closing positive in 15 of the 17 calendar years since then. As a result, a large swath of investors have been […]

As the new year begins, many people naturally find themselves reflecting—on where they live, how well protected they are, and whether they’re set up properly for what’s ahead. Year-end articles, rankings, and headlines tend to amplify those questions, sometimes in ways that are more unsettling than helpful. In this month’s newsletter, I’d like to share […]

It’s easy to have a higher tolerance for risk when the market does really well, as it has for the past 16 years. In data going back 75 years, stocks as a percentage of household assets are now at record highs. That’s not necessarily good news, if past data is meaningful. We’ll look at some […]