9 Mar 2020

Markets Testing Your Mettle

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

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22 Apr 2019

The Secret to Yale’s Success

I’ve written about David Swensen and the Yale Endowment several times over the years (here and here, for example) because i find both fascinating. I first learned about Swensen in 2005, when he was heralded ‘Yale’s $8 Billion Man’ upon the 20th anniversary of taking over the endowment.  The performance during that period was remarkable: 16.1 percent versus the S&P 500, which earned 11.9 percent during the same time frame. … Read More

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15 Apr 2019

Why Hire a Financial Advisor?

Over the years, most of the Daily Insights that I’ve written are about investing, financial planning or, less frequently, economics. I don’t think I’ve ever written about the people hire financial advisors – mostly, because I can’t come up with much of an answer other than a generic statement about ‘peace of mind’ or describe why my most recent client hired me. Now, though, I’ll have a better answer, thanks… Read More

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8 Oct 2018

What Ever Happened to Bitcoin, Anyway?

Around this time last year and in the months to follow, you’d be hard pressed to find a news site, especially in the financial realm, that did not have an article about bitcoin or some other form of crypto currency or blockchain. Today, you’ll still see an article here or there, but by in large, the hype has subsided. As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the publishing of bitcoin’s… Read More

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17 Sep 2018

Remembering Lehman Brothers: What Have We Learned?

Five years ago, at the five-year anniversary weekend remembering the collapse of Lehman Brothers, I wasn’t ready to deal with the bad memories of that terrible time. Granted, what happened 10-years ago in financial markets was not like being in a war, a natural disaster, sick with a terrible disease or the victim of a terrible crime, but it was still upsetting to me (no doubt because I live in… Read More

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20 Aug 2018

Performance Like You’ve Never Seen

When I graduated from college and started working for Mark Twain Bank’s brokerage unit, there was an older gentleman who occupied one of the offices in the branch.  I’m not sure he was actually employed by the bank at that point, but I was told that he had been an important executive at one time. He came in around nine, read the newspaper (we all did in those days), made… Read More

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23 Jul 2018

Whither Value? Ask Warren Buffett

I feel as though I’ve written this article a few too many times: value investing is struggling. Pioneered by Warren Buffett’s mentor Benjamin Graham, value investing is the method of buying stocks inexpensively, with the hope that the current problems that’s causing the cheapness pass, and the stock will rebound sharply. Decades into Buffett’s illustrious career, finance academics found that the process of buying cheap stocks led to higher than… Read More

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16 Jul 2018

What’s Your China Exposure Amid the Trade Skirmish?

One of the interesting things about the current trade skirmish (I’m not willing to call it a war yet), is that we are fighting on multiple fronts. Even though we have tariffs on aluminum and steel from Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, we all know that the primary combatant in this altercation is China. Even more interesting, perhaps, is that we have more exposure to China than ever before,… Read More

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18 Jun 2018

What Happened to International Stocks?

As we approach the halfway point of 2018, some things are looking very different from last year. Although it has been a bumpier ride compared to last year, US stocks are on track to have another good year as the S&P 500 is up more than 4.5 percent and the Russell 2000 Index is up more than 10 percent. But unlike last year, international stocks have effectively been flat, flipping… Read More

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4 Jun 2018

Changes are Coming to the S&P 500

In the old active-versus-passive debate, the S&P 500 serves as the champion fighter in the passive corner.   That’s funny, because the S&P 500 is hardly passive. For example, it’s not a list of the largest 500 companies, but a curated list of stocks chosen by the index committee at Standards & Poor’s.  Most of the differences between the index and the actual list of the largest 500 companies are relatively… Read More

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