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For most of the past decade, we didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about how to invest our clients’ cash. With short-term interest rates pegged near zero, it didn’t really matter whether your “ready” funds were in a bank deposit account, money market fund, CD, or short-term Treasury bill. Income on cash-like instruments of […]

Dropping bond prices have recently caused anguish for many investors, especially since bonds are usually held out as the less risky part of a balanced portfolio. With the U.S. bond market losing more than 9% so far in 2022, it’s natural to wonder if bonds are still holding up their end of the bargain. Over […]

From the end of the Civil War to 1914, globalization, or the increase in trade between nations, grew dramatically. This was due in part to leaps in transportation technology like steamships, the building of the Suez/Panama Canals, and transatlantic cables which allowed for more direct telegraph links. Then came World War I, and globalization came […]

The stork is not working overtime: 10.6 million – the number of babies born in China in 2021, the lowest since 1949. The one child policy put in place in 1980 was highly effective. Now China needs more babies, but urban couples are balking. Like everywhere, raising more children is increasingly expensive. (Barron’s)7.3 million – […]

Picture a factory that sucks carbon dioxide out of the air to reduce global warming, then turns it into stone. Well, it’s real, and it’s been operating outside of Reykjavik, Iceland since last September. It’s also been identified as one of the 10 breakthrough technologies of 2022 by the MIT Technology Review, which has been […]

It’s our 36th year of tracking the Hanson Index, our yearly lighthearted look at local prices for Vermont essentials like a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cone or a Burlington beach permit. As you’d expect, prices are mostly up, but luckily, our Hanson Index doesn’t include the worst of the past year’s price hikes like […]

Barton Biggs was one of the absolute best stock market commentators in the 1980s and 90s. He was a partner at Morgan Stanley for over 30 years and the firm’s first Global Strategist. I saved one of his commentaries from 1982, which talks about the need for different strategies in different times. “Winston Churchill in […]

You have saved diligently for 20, 30, even 40 years. Now comes the big question: How much can you comfortably withdraw from your nest egg and not run out of funds by the time you die? This is not an inconsequential question since life expectancy is up significantly the past 50 years. The average 65-year-old […]

As professional investors, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to best construct portfolios for our clients. These efforts focus on identifying the combination of assets (stocks, bonds, cash etc.) that will produce the maximum return for a desired level of risk. A whole body of research, based on vast quantities of historic […]

This is one of those times. The invasion of Ukraine has produced horrors on the ground, a refugee crisis of one to two million Ukrainians fleeing to neighboring countries (and counting), and a response by the West that has been both strong and unified. Not only have Western Europe and the U.S. put lockdown restrictions […]

Now that we are getting back to some semblance of normal, we have all sorts of questions. Should we still wear masks even where it is no longer officially required? And what about restaurants? Some of us have not been inside one for months if not years. Everything still the same there? And what about […]

Companies are struggling to cope with rising wage costs. As reported in recent earnings calls, this fact seems to be true regardless of whether you are a firm trying to attract and retain hourly workers or highly paid software engineers. In some cases, the labor shortage is having an immediate impact; restaurants like Starbucks have […]