18 Mar 2024

The Return of Sound Money

There are a handful of annual outlooks that I look forward to each year, and one of them is Vanguard’s Economic and Market Outlook. The report, which you can find here, is thoughtful, thorough, and isn’t trying to sell you anything (which is high praise in this industry). They also have great titles, and this year’s was a standout: A Return to Sound Money. In their opening paragraph, the authors… Read More

18 Dec 2023

Fed Chair Powell Dons Red Suit and Fake White Beard

Halloween turned out much more treat and much less trick this year, as it ushered in an early Santa Claus rally. Since October 27th, the S&P 500 is up 14.6 percent, which is more than we hope for in a good year. For the year, the S&P 500 is up almost 25 percent. We’ve still got a few more weeks, so it’s too early to start counting your chickens, but… Read More

12 Jun 2023

The Bond Market is of Mixed Minds about a Recession

One of the things that I hear all the time these days is that the bond market and the stock market aren’t in agreement about whether a recession is coming. Usually, I hear this from someone who thinks that the bond market is right and that the stock market will correct sharply when the recession comes. And in fact, bond investors are giving strong signals of a recession from the… Read More

27 Mar 2023

Cash Matters

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

15 Mar 2023

Silicon Valley Bank: Something Broke

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

14 Mar 2023

Silicon Valley Bank: Something Broke

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

27 Feb 2023

Considering Inflation Protected Bonds (Again)

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

6 Feb 2023

Acropolis Clients Market View

Since January, I’ve offered previews for the Investor Social, which we held last week to great success. Mother nature threw us a little snow, but we still managed to pack the house and will need to find a larger venue next year, and put it online. In the meantime, we’ll provide the presentation to anyone that asks. The highlight of the show for me is when we ask the audience… Read More

17 Jan 2023

Acropolis Investor Social Preview #1

After two years of staying home, Acropolis is hosting our 5th Annual Investor Social (invite below). I thought it would be fun to preview some of the slides leading up to the event, partly in hopes of drawing folks and partly to give the out-of-towners who weren’t invited some of the content (I’ll be happy to email the presentation after the event to those who missed it). This week, I… Read More

14 Nov 2022

Good News for Stocks & Bonds (Less so, for Crypto)

Stocks were sharply higher last week, more than erasing the prior week’s declines. Although Wednesday suffered a tough selloff of more than two percent, Thursday’s 5.6 percent rally and Friday’s 0.9 percent move higher took the S&P 500 Total Return for the week to 5.9 percent. The big move is easily attributed to the better-than-expected Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) index, which was finally a step in the right direction (more… Read More