The “I’s” had it across the first quarter, as inflation and interest rates continued to dominate popular financial headlines. That is, at least, until the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown took over, followed by the government’s swift reaction to the same. What should you make of the quarterly news? If you’d missed these events in real […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Today, in a whole new year, let’s talk about parts versus wholes. The theme is hardly new, but it bears repeating, lest we forget how essential they both are—to each other, to us, and to our financial well-being. There’s never a lack of noise coming from the moving parts that make up your whole portfolio, […]
Sixty years after imagining the project, and after both had passed away, why did the famed artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrap L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris in silvery-blue fabric and red rope (which became an especially ethereal nighttime display)? Because they wanted to. And because their heirs carried out their vision, funding it through […]
As we swing into the second half of 2021, consider this quote from a book first published back in 1954: “A river cannot, we are told, rise above its source. Well, it can seem to if there is a pumping station concealed somewhere about.” — Darrell Huff, “How to Lie with Statistics” Does the sentiment […]
In third-quarter markets that represented a second consecutive quarter of remarkable overall gains, what stock outshone all the others in the S&P 1500 Composite Index? Zoom? Apple? Netflix? Nope, none of these, or any of the other trendy FAANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google’s parent company Alphabet). Not Tesla, either. It was Tupperware, up a jaw-dropping […]
Before we dive into the usual quarterly investment insights, here’s some fun trivia: Did you know you have to count to 1,000 before you’ll find the letter “a” in a spelled-out number? We thought you could use that break from the torrent of mid-year market commentaries on 2020’s bipolar extremes. The general theme has been […]