First Save, Then Invest In our last piece, we wrote about how recency bias can damage your investments by causing current crises to loom large, while rewriting your memories of past challenges. Recency tricks us into overpaying during heady times, and bailing at bargain rates, when our confidence fades. One of the best ways to […]
Well, it’s official. Third quarter has ended in bear market territory across multiple markets. To place that news in meaningful context, we pose two questions: In better times, had you boldly “pre-decided” what you would and would not do during the next bear market? “Great investment experiences treat most portfolio decisions as non-decisions. They’ve been […]
Remembering Summers Past There were so many big events competing for our attention this summer … said nearly every investor, almost every summer, ever. We’re not making light of this summer’s uncertainties. Inflation is real, and needs to be managed; we also can’t rule out the possibility we’ll still see stagflation and/or a recession. Heightened […]
Even though we know it was just dumb luck, can we get a round of applause for seeming to forecast last month’s surprisingly strong market returns? It’s almost (but not really) as if the market were reading our mind when three broad U.S. stock indexes ended July 2022 with their best returns since 2020—up 9.1%, […]
There’s been a lot of talk about recessions lately: Whether one is near, far, or perhaps already here. Whether we can or should try to avoid it. What it even means to be in a recession, and how it’s related to current market turmoil. To put market and recessionary concerns in perspective, it might […]
Welcome to the second half of 2022. What’s up next? As always, your guess is as good as ours. If anything, the past quarter has demonstrated how even familiar shores can shape-shift on us with each tide. Following are a few of the ways in which the financial landscape has been disorienting us lately. The […]
Is rising inflation souring your financial plans? As we covered in our report, “Interest Rates, Inflation, and Investment Strategy,” protecting the bulk of your wealth is mostly about building and maintaining a well-structured investment portfolio with a few anti-inflation elements. Outside of your core portfolio, there is also a potentially sweet deal for turning some […]
After taking a closer look at interest rates in part 1 and inflation in part 2, we come to the heart of the matter: When interest rates, inflation, or both are on the rise, what’s an investor to do? Big picture, we are continuing to deploy the same core principles we use to help people […]
And just like that, two years have passed since spring 2020. Two years since none of us had a clue how long COVID would linger … or how quickly today would arrive. Time can confound us that way, magically managing to crawl and fly at the same time. Capital markets are often as confounding, as […]
Has rising inflation got you down? In our last piece, “Understanding Interest Rates” we explored how rising and falling interest rates can impact a healthy economy. Today, let’s add inflation to the conversation. How Do We Measure Inflation? Inflation is the rate at which money loses its purchasing power over time. As you might guess, […]