25 Aug 2014

Janet Yellen and the Ice Bucket Challenge

President Harry Truman apparently once quipped, ‘give me a one-handed economist’ because his advisors would start by saying, ‘on the one hand’ and then begin their concluding remarks a few minutes later with, ‘on the other hand…’ In that sense, Janet Yellen’s speech on Friday was two-handed with a little something for everyone, saying both that the labor market is still suffering from the 2008-2009 recession and that interest rates… Read More

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22 Aug 2014

The Bull Market That Won’t Die

This is the bull market that just won’t quit. Just a few weeks ago, when stocks dipped it appeared we were finally getting the correction that we’ve all collectively been expecting for years now. It’s unusual to go this long without a 10 percent correction or a 20 percent drop, which is the typical definition of a bear market. The decline that we just went through was less than four… Read More

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21 Aug 2014

Mutual Fund Fees Matter

As I mentioned the other day, I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s changed over the years here at Acropolis. Three years ago, we made our first investment in open-ended mutual funds. We were early adopters of exchange traded funds (ETFs) that operate like mutual funds in some ways but are a little more tax efficient, offer liquidity during the trading day and are often slightly less expensive. Today, we’ve… Read More

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20 Aug 2014

Avoiding Risk Can Be Risky

In my opinion, one of the most amazing stories this year is the surprise drop in interest rates. The 10-year US Treasury note started the year at three percent and nearly everyone, including me, expected interest rates to rise this year (but for the short end, which is controlled by the Fed). Today, the 10-year closed at a yield of 2.40 percent and closed as low as 2.34 percent last… Read More

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19 Aug 2014

Not All Indexes Are Created Equal

Acropolis will turn 12 in less than 10 days and I can’t help reflect on what has changed over that time and what has stayed the same. Since the beginning, we’ve used index funds, but the way we use them has changed fairly dramatically in some cases. Take small cap stocks, for example. A dozen years ago, we used exchange-traded-funds (ETFs) as the core component of our small cap allocation… Read More

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18 Aug 2014

Classic Conflict of Interest

Although it’s been gone for a long time now, I always admired, the St. Louis based brokerage, A.G. Edwards and its CEO while I was growing up, Ben Edwards. I met him one time at a wedding while I was in college and we spoke for five or ten minutes. As you might expect, he gave a quick spiel about how great the company was and how important it was… Read More

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15 Aug 2014

Riots and Homeowners Insurance

For the better part of this past week, I was out of the office at family camp in Minocqua Wisconsin.  I really tried to avoid my phone and the emails and news that goes with it. As a result, I had no idea that while I was enjoying the world-famous Min-aqua-bat trick water ski team (photos here), the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson was burning after the shooting of Michael… Read More

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5 Aug 2014

What Argentina’s Debt Default Means to You

The story of Argentina’s recent debt default begins in the Great Depression.  Not our Great Depression – their Great Depression, which started in 1998 and ended in 2002. Leading up to the crisis, the Argentinian government massively over-borrowed and was forced to default on their bonds when the country fell into financial crisis – the economy shrank by 20 percent, unemployment rose to 25 percent, bank deposits were seized, the… Read More

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30 Jul 2014

Official Market Forecast Update

If you were reading Daily Insights back in January (and I hope you were), I started the year off right with the first ever Official Acropolis 2014 S&P 500 Market Forecast. In case you missed it, here’s what I said: ‘We forecast with a 90 percent degree of confidence that the S&P 500 will close the year at 2,033, plus or minus 450 points.’ So far, we’re nailing it! Just… Read More

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29 Jul 2014

Pension Cuts Hedge Fund Investments

I was reading the Wall Street Journal over the weekend and saw that the California Public Employees Retirement System (Calpers) was cutting back their hedge fund exposure by 40 percent. Given that hedge funds have generally struggled over the past five years, I was interested to see what the article said, and, basically, it said that they weren’t happy with the lackluster performance and high fees. The article then said… Read More

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