News & Insights

Back in 1960, America made 100% of the world’s semiconductor chips. Names like Fairchild Semiconductor, Texas Instruments (TI), and eventually Intel dominated. Today we make just 12% of the world’s chips domestically. Before you panic, just remember one reason is that many U.S. companies set up plants abroad to take advantage of lower costs. A […]

Founders of behavioral economics, Daniel Kahneman and his long-time collaborator, Amos Tversky, developed a new understanding of how we make decisions. Despite being a psychologist, Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for the contributions and challenges that his work on “human judgement and decision-making under uncertainty” made to the field. Classical economics considers humans […]

The U.S. is running out of money! Well not exactly, but the Treasury has run out of borrowing power based on the current debt ceiling of $34.4 trillion. It is using “extraordinary measures” now to extend the time Congress has to approve an increase in the debt ceiling. If Congress doesn’t act by the middle […]

Back at the end of October, Barron’s posed the question, “Is China Investible?” The MSCI China Index had gone nowhere for over 25 years, GDP growth was stagnating under the weight of the zero-Covid policy, the property market was teetering, and the government was clamping down on private entrepreneurs. There was little doubt these policies […]

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 […]

It’s not too often we get to introduce a new team member, but this is one of those rare times, and we’re excited. H+D is delighted to welcome Mark Andrews, who joins us as an Associate Portfolio Manager. Mark will be working closely with clients on investments and planning as well as helping with research […]

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 […]