According to Google’s Community Mobility data, we are visiting supermarkets and drugstores at the same level we did before the pandemic, and we are almost back to pre-pandemic levels when it comes to visiting restaurants, shopping centers, and recreational spots like theme parks, movie theaters, and museums. But the one place we still are not […]
News & Insights
Hanson + Doremus’ Vermont City Marathon Relay Team
Team Hanson+Doremus had a great time running in the 2021 Vermont City Marathon Relay! The event looked a little different this year, with everyone running the same 5-mile course at the same time (instead of handing off to each other across the regular marathon route). This was great for us because we could all keep […]
How worried are we about the world?…
How worried should we be? The list of potential investing headwinds is growing. The economy looks like it’s decelerating as the Delta variant, supply chain constraints, and hiring challenges throw sand in the cogs of growth. Inflation is running hot. Some are even talking about stagflation, the combination of low growth and high inflation that […]
“Things are hopeless but not serious.” (Viennese Satirist, Karl Kraus)
The Social Security Trustees recently released their Annual Report August 31, which warned that the Social Security Reserve Fund would run out of money by 2033, one year earlier than previously projected. Social Security is paid from two sources: First from FICA payroll taxes, the 7.65% of gross pay paid by both employees and employers. […]
Back to the office…Remedial education required
We here at Hanson+Doremus try to be “impactful” and “value-add.” We are all about “big data” (we read multiple newspapers!) we have “great capacity” (10+ employees!) and operate “holistically” and “sustainably” (just like the SATs, I am going to assume it is OK to guess on the meaning of some of these.) Buzzwords. Buzzwords. The […]
A quarter century on…any words of wisdom?
We have been writing this newsletter for 25 years now. We are not market forecasters. We don’t try to tell you when to buy or when to sell. We are long-term investors, almost always fully invested. We help clients decide on an appropriate level of risk, stocks versus bonds versus cash, and then we stick […]
Keeping an eye on Wall Street…
Wall Street has a long history of coming up with “innovations.” Some new products such as Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) have truly benefitted investors. But for every one of these good ideas there have been many more that did investors harm; the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that played such a central role in the 2008-2009 […]
A report from China…
From August through October my wife Yang Xin was in China helping to care for her father. Xin lives in Zhoushan, a series of islands off the coast of Zhejiang Province, once remote but now connected by high-speed expressways. Shenjiamen, the principal town of Zhoushan is a prosperous fishing port, a major oil terminal for […]
Medicare Advantage turns 25…
Health care is an enormous issue. For the elderly (over 65) it is not just about cost but also availability and choosing the right plan. Medicare, the government program covering hospitalization and outpatient physician costs for the elderly, was enacted under Lyndon Johnson in 1965. Before that you had to be lucky enough to have […]
The tax man cometh…
Eventually some version of Joe Biden’s big social spending bill will pass. While we don’t know the final price tag, we can be sure of one thing: higher taxes will be needed to pay for the wide range of health care, education, childcare, and climate initiatives embedded in the bill. To understand the proposed tax […]
Tales from a Rooftop Solar Shopper…
Installing solar panels has been a goal since I bought my home in 2019. As my little ranch house is a classic 1971 fixer upper, my solar dreams have gotten shelved somewhere between asbestos abatement and eradicating carpenter ants. This changed for me in August with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report that we’re […]
Remember that book, Dow 36,000?…
We are almost there now…but this is not the timing the authors had in mind. The book, Dow 36,000, was written by James K. Glassman and Kevin A. Hassett and published in 1999. Their thesis was that stocks were worth a lot more than they were then trading at. In fact, an awful lot more. […]
Wall Street explained – the CliffsNotes version
Those of us of a certain age will remember “CliffsNotes,” the condensed study notes that saved a lot of procrastinating students from academic purgatory. I still have never read War and Peace, but the CliffsNotes were great! Back in 2012, Jason Zweig, the excellent columnist in The Wall Street Journal, came up with the idea […]
Watch the scotch tape expense and don’t confuse luck for brains
“When mortals go through a prosperous period, it seems to be human nature for expenses to balloon. We are going to be the exception,” wrote Alan Greenberg, chair of Wall Street firm Bear Stearns, in one of his famous memos exhorting partners to watch expenses like a hawk and pinch every penny. It’s perfectly sensible […]
Electric utilities forge a new path forward
The Biden administration has laid out some aggressive goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Among other things, these objectives aim to have “clean” energy (wind, solar, hydro, etc.) produce 80% of the nation’s total energy generation by 2030, up from approximately 40% today. This target follows on the recently rejoined Paris Agreement’s stated aim for […]
