News & Insights

Americans have long struggled to save enough for retirement, and unfortunately, the recent bout of inflation has not made that job any easier. In a recent survey, online financial publication Bankrate found that 55% of respondents reported feeling behind in their retirement savings, up from 52% last year (see chart below). To help bolster Americans’ […]

Like the rest of the world, we at H+D were glued to the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which began November 20 and concluded December 18 with Argentina winning over France in an absolute nailbiter. Like any good organization, we also held an office pool where we vied to predict the outcomes of each World Cup […]

No one has actually asked us for our 2023 forecast, but it is customary this time of year to say something about the upcoming twelve months, so into the abyss we go. The problem is, as Hugh Hendry a British hedge fund manager has said, none of us have been to the future so we […]

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 […]