We are pleased to provide a digital copy of Portfolio Insights, our quarterly newsletter. Table of Contents: Stock Market Summary Bond Market Review Value Stocks are a Good Value Inside the Economy We Need to Talk About Cash The Big Picture Click here to read the issue: Q1 2023 Portfolio Insights
For nine years now, Acropolis has hired a third party to evaluate the market impact of our trading. Whenever we talk to clients about rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting, raising cash for withdrawals, or putting new money to work, our traders work with the portfolio management teams to figure out what trades ought to occur and then the traders take those trades to market. Last year, our traders went to market almost… Read More
After the market closed on Friday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk at the office, wondering what I was going to write about this week. I’m sort of tired of the banking crisis for the moment, even though it’s not over: Deutsche Bank was in the hot seat Friday. In any case, a terrific longtime client (and reader!) called to ask some questions about money market funds, and it… Read More
Even though the US banking system is still under strain, I said last week that the current circumstances were not like what happened in 2008, and I stand by that view today. The 2008 financial crisis started because banks, in the aggregate, made bad loans that couldn’t be paid back. We all remember the easy lending standards that went beyond subprime loans. Who can forget the NINJA loan? No Income,… Read More
On Monday, I wrote that I would do three days of Insights in response to the Silicon Valley Bank failure. First, I wrote about how we are protecting your cash in this environment. Next, I wrote about how the bank failure might impact the overall economy. Today, I’ll try to break down how Silicon Valley Bank (SBV) failed. I’m certain that more details will emerge in the coming days, weeks,… Read More
Yesterday, I wrote about how your cash is protected in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) failure last week, and I promised to write about the potential impact on the overall economy today. Before I do that, I thought I would let you know that one of the two primary corporate bond funds that we use owned some SCV bonds that lost about half of their value since last… Read More
The Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failure is a big deal. Big enough that I am going to tackle it over three days. Today, I’ll talk about your cash and how it is protected. Tomorrow, I’ll talk about what SVB’s failure could mean for the economy and why this failure differs from the 2008 financial crisis so far. And, on Wednesday, I’ll break down what happened at SVB that caused it… Read More
Jim Cramer is a fixture on the financial news channel, CNBC. He’s been on as long as we’ve been in business, and started his current show, Mad Money, three years after we got going. In the early days, I felt like I had to watch him because clients would ask about his picks and expected me to say something about them. I found his show exhausting because he shouts a… Read More
In the first quarter issue of Portfolio Insights in 2017, I wrote that Acropolis was phasing out our exposure to inflation-protected bonds, also known as TIPs (for Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities). At the time, inflation was low and stable, and although I whole heartedly supported removing TIPs, I wondered what would happen when we were hit with surprise inflation, which is when TIPs work best. Well, it took five years for… Read More
I’d like to meet the person in Washington who comes up with the silly names for laws just for the purpose of creating a catchy acronym. Case in point is the newest iteration of the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement, better known as the Secure 2.0 Act. The Act has a number of provisions that raise financial planning issues for a lot of people. For example, were you… Read More
