We are pleased to provide a digital copy of Portfolio Insights, our quarterly newsletter. Table of Contents: Stock Market Summary Bond Market Review Are Elections Bad for Markets? Presidential Markets The Big Picture Click here to read the issue: Q3 2020 Portfolio Insights
We are pleased to provide a digital copy of Portfolio Insights, our quarterly newsletter. Table of Contents: Stock Market Summary Bond Market Review CARES Act Summary The Big Picture Click here to read the issue: Q2 2020 Portfolio Insights
Last week, I noted that in the Q&A session following the latest Federal Reserve meeting that Chair Powell said that other monetary policy tools such as ‘yield-curve control’ were still under consideration. What is yield curve control, or YCC? Good question. A little background first. Now that the Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates to zero (okay, near zero, but effectively zero), what tools does it have? We know that the… Read More
About one month after Lehman Brothers collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, Warren Buffett penned an opinion piece for the New York Times that I found immensely comforting. You can read the article by clicking here, but the thrust of it was that even if he didn’t know what stock prices would do in the short-run, that stocks would make record profits in the future and he was buying stocks. My… Read More
Even in today’s economic environment, coming up with topics daily can be a challenge. So, when a reader asks a question, I am more than happy to answer it in this forum. Last week, I received a question in response to my article, ‘Chance of Recession: 100 percent.’ The reader wanted to know what the recession meant for bonds, especially in the coming months when markets will be volatile. That’s… Read More
One of the best decisions that our Investment Committee made was back in 2008 when we decided not to add commodities to the portfolio. It’s hard to believe now, but there was a lot of pressure back then to add it because stocks were down and commodities were doing well. If you look at the 12-month period ending on June 30, 2008 just before the worst part of the storm,… Read More
We are pleased to provide a digital copy of Portfolio Insights, our quarterly newsletter. Table of Contents: Stock Market Summary Bond Market Review CARES Act Summary The Big Picture Click here to read the issue: Q1 2020 Portfolio Insights
Yesterday, I discussed corporate bonds, and how their yield tells us something about investor risk appetite. You can read the article here. The same thing applies to non-investment grade bonds, which are also called ‘high yield,’ or less pleasantly, ‘junk bonds.’ The first chart below is exactly like the first chart in yesterday’s article, but also includes the yield on junk bonds (in yellow) in addition to Treasury bonds (in blue)… Read More
One of the areas of the market that we’re paying close attention to right now is corporate bonds. To raise money, companies borrow money in the form of bonds or issue stock by selling ownership in the form of equity. Corporate bonds are safer than stocks in the aggregate because if a company fails, the bond holders get their money back before the equity holders. While corporate bonds may be… Read More
As I noted here last week, despite the market turmoil, it is important to remember that we planned for this. We have prolonged periods of market stress built into our financial plans. It’s also moments like this when we can see whether we’ve accurately assessed your risk tolerance. Every client has an Investment Policy Statement (IPS) that estimates how much an allocation could lose over certain periods. Importantly, we don’t include… Read More
