News

There was a lot to digest in 2022: Inflation wasn’t transitory à la the Fed’s original thinking. Stock and bond prices went down. Grocery bills went up. And after one of the winningest investment streaks, the simple strategy of owning a passive basket of U.S. stocks stopped working. Still, there were some pleasant surprises among […]

The stock market is very much like Patty Griffin’s lyric. There is an excess of short-term noise on Wall Street. The nuggets of important wisdom get lost in the daily waterfall of information. A valuable source of enduring Wall Street wisdom is Howard Marks, the co-founder of Oaktree Capital, the largest U.S. investor in distressed […]

I am talking about our relationship to fossil fuels. Most Americans favor taking the steps to become carbon neutral. But at the same time a majority of Americans (see chart below) want to keep a mix of fossil fuels and renewables. Where you stand on this depends very much on where you sit. Democrats, especially […]

We have been managing investments and providing financial planning for 27 years, and for nearly as long we have been bringing you a December chocolate recipe as our gift for the Holiday Season. Prior to the pandemic, the annual chocolate cook-off was an eagerly anticipated office event. Favorite chocolate recipes were secretly hidden away, an […]

Old habits die hard, they say, and so it is that investors have struggled to let go of the playbook that triumphed the past decade. Buying the dip in big tech and old favorites worked great in the benign, low-volatility bull markets we had for over a decade. But not this year. Nothing has snapped […]

Inflation is high, currently at levels not seen in over four decades. The Fed’s target for inflation to ensure balanced growth in the economy is 2%. Much like Icarus, inflation is soaring way too close to the sun for the Fed to feel comfortable about our economic outlook, and they are moving aggressively to fix […]

This is the question Barron’s posed recently (10/30/2022). Over the years, China has been a frustrating puzzle not only for foreign governments but also for investors. Look at the growth of the country since 1981 (chart right). How could such rapid growth not translate into great returns for investors? Well, growth has not equaled investment […]

I pay attention to final articles by departing financial columnists. These pieces always cut through the chaff and get right to the kernels of truth that the writer has learned over the years. Buttonwood is the financial column in The Economist. Buttonwood refers to the tree where trading was originally transacted on Wall Street. In […]

Earlier this month, the Treasury Department reported that the nation’s gross debt for the first time exceeded $31 trillion. Interest on these obligations is expected to be approximately $400 billion this year or about 8% of all federal revenues collected. The debt’s relatively short maturity profile means that interest rate increases will start pressuring federal […]

Used car buyers have received an unwelcome crash course in supply and demand over the last two years. As new car production cratered, consumers flush with cash and low-cost financing looked to the used market as an acceptable substitute, pushing prices through the roof. With new car inventory inching up, and higher financing rates poised […]

Some say this may be the biggest investment bubble in the world today. Let’s do the math and see. China has been on an incredible growth curve since 1979. The economic initiatives Deng Xiaoping put in place in the late seventies have lifted more people out of poverty, more quickly than has ever been done […]

Dust off the passport. We are goin’ traveling. The dollar is stronger today than it has been in 20 years. Now is the time to go. This year alone the dollar is up 15% against a basket of world currencies, and for the first year in ages the dollar is worth more than the Euro. […]