15 May 2023

America & the PIIGS

A little more than ten years ago, Greece almost left the European Union (EU) because the longstanding structural weaknesses of the Greek economy were hit hard by the 2008 global financial crisis. The crisis was called Grexit, which should sound familiar since it was adapted a few years later for the Brit’s departure from the EU. Greece wasn’t alone, though. Several EU countries were in trouble: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and… Read More

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8 May 2023

Stock Buybacks: Finding Common Ground Amid Controversy

Companies’ capital decisions aren’t usually very controversial, like paying down debt, paying another quarterly dividend, or upgrading the facilities. Stock buybacks, however, are another story: they generate a lot of controversy. Before getting into the debate, let me take a minute to describe a buyback. When companies have extra capital, they sometimes go into the open market and buy back their own stock, hence the name (although they are sometimes… Read More

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1 May 2023

How to Avoid Disaster

September will mark the 25th anniversary of the failure of the massive hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), and my podcast feed is filling up with retrospectives. One podcast featured Roger Lowenstein, the author of When Genius Failed, which is considered the definitive work on the subject. I read it when it came out in 2000 and once again in subsequent years, and it’s a great book that I thoroughly enjoyed…. Read More

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24 Apr 2023

ChatGPT Did Not Write This Insight

I resisted downloading ChatGPT until last week because I’m increasingly skeptical about the benefits of technology. Don’t get me wrong; I love technology. I use my iPhone more than I care to admit and have to be mindful about not using it too much (and I still do). The problem isn’t technology – it’s people. It’s like food – we need it to live, and the right foods in the right amounts… Read More

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3 Apr 2023

Successful Trading at Acropolis

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

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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

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20 Mar 2023

Banking Crisis: Swiss Edition

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

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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

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13 Mar 2023

Silicon Valley Bank

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

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6 Mar 2023

Betting with Jim Cramer. Or Against Him

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

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