News & Insights

Somewhere in the second quarter, the economic narrative shifted to not if we were going to have a recession, but how deep and how long it might be. We decided to take a step back and look at how we got to this point and compare today’s outlook to similar periods in the past. Over […]

According to a recent survey by the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, 69% of Americans said they were confident about being able to retire comfortably. While that doesn’t seem like a half-bad number, the other side of the coin is that 31% are worried – some deeply so — that they won’t be able to […]

We will deal with the ugly and the bad first, then get to the good. Just look at the chart below right. It gets a lot of people really agitated. Imports have exceeded exports for years, and even though the chart says exports are improving a bit (relatively), we will not get to a balanced […]

I have always been interested in money, not from the standpoint of what it can buy or how we can use it to invest, but from the standpoint of psychology. Money is the ultimate confidence game. The dollar is not backed by anything today. It is worth what it will buy, and we are confident […]

Recent global events, both economic and political, have us thinking a lot about the United States’ competitive standing in the world today. How has the economic landscape changed these past few years, and do we have what it takes to keep up? Two factors determine a country’s economic growth rate. The first, the growth of […]

Corporate profits still are rising, and that’s good news in a world with plenty to worry about. War, inflation, political divisiveness, take your pick — you’d be forgiven for thinking things are going to hell in a handbasket. But at least for now, corporate sales and earnings are staying resilient. According to FactSet, 77% of […]

The first thing that is apparent today is that Western sanctions against Russia have not brought the country to its knees (see chart right). For sure if you are looking for high-end Western brands or a McDonald’s burger, then sanctions have taken a bite, but Russia in general is a closed economy. It manufactures internally […]

It has been a while since we have experienced a traditional recession and bear market. The COVID recession of February 2020 was a different kind. It was short (two months), and the bear market (one month) was very quick. Before COVID, you have to go all the way back to the housing crisis of December […]

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 – […]