The Chinese have a long memory. They remember the unequal treaties they were forced to sign in the mid-19th century ceding valuable trade and treaty ports to European powers. To us it might seem ancient history. To them it is still very much alive and the humiliation is still very much felt. The ultimate goal […]
News & Insights
Sadder Than Ever…
On Sunday, May 31, as the protests around George Floyd and civil unrest took hold, we had our saddest day ever according to something called the Twitter Hedonometer, an index that has been measuring our daily “happiness” since 2008. Developed by UVM researchers, the Hedonometer looks at a large random sample of English language tweets […]
ESG 101…
Investing has never been an industry to shy away from buzzwords and acronyms, especially when it comes to a hot new trend. For those of you interested in the increasingly popular sphere of socially responsible investing (SRI) – a broad term representing a wide variety of strategies that consider not only financial return but social […]
Coronavirus Consequences…
GREEN ENERGY NOT DOWN FOR THE COUNT The price of crude oil is down 75% from 10 years ago. The futures price even went below zero for a short period last month. You might assume that very cheap oil would have spelt doom for Green Energy, the energy produced by wind and solar. You would […]
Ditching The Premises. A Report From The Front Line…
March 17, 2020 was the day Hanson & Doremus officially moved online, everyone working from home. The big question was, could business still function without the office? The reassuring answer was yes it could, business has continued quite seamlessly and mostly uninterrupted. In discussions with employees the consensus is that we are just as productive […]
What Comes Next?…
It’s been a strange, sad time for the world — and yet, also a period of radical adaptation, learning, reflection and reassessment. That’s not all bad. Historically, pandemics have led to big breaks from the past, and that’s what we seem to be experiencing now. Everything we thought we knew is being questioned. Widespread assumptions, […]
The Looming Debt Dilemma…
In the last six weeks, Congress has passed with broad support three separate pieces of legislation aimed at offsetting the devastating economic impact of the COVID pandemic. The $3 trillion price tag for these initiatives is three times what the federal government borrowed last year and more than four times the cost of the TARP […]
How Do We Get Back To Working?…
A character in an Ernest Hemingway novel once said that bankruptcy happens “two ways: gradually, then suddenly.” This is how we have experienced Covid-19. The question now is, how soon can the economy be restarted? Wall Street will not find its bearings until we get some idea about Main Street. Here is a stab at […]
We Are All Amateur Epidemiologists Now…
There is no cure for Covid-19 today so the best we can do is figure out who has the virus (symptoms or no symptoms) and try to mitigate the spread. Other countries had their principal outbreak before us and might offer us public health lessons to learn from. China was slow to admit to the […]
When Coronavirus Gives You Lemons…
With plenty of uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic it’s hard to know how to control certain elements. But with the recently passed CARES Act there are some opportunities on the financial planning front that may help people better weather this storm. The chart below outlines some key takeaways. One item we find particularly relevant is […]
Ghost In The Machine…
Often, components essential to the functioning of an engine work so smoothly they stay hidden until something breaks. Then again, sometimes we will ourselves to drive on even after being warned about faulty parts. Over the last six weeks, we’ve experienced a whiplash of selling and buying across bond markets. First, prices dropped with the […]
The Market Doesn’t Mind Bad News…
What it minds is uncertainty. And uncertainty is what we have today. No one really knows how bad the novel coronavirus outbreak will get and how far it will spread. On the economic front no one knows how badly all this will affect the global economy and how long it will take for things to […]
