8 Dec 2025

Will Artificial Intelligence Tinker or Transform?

A few months ago, I read Coming into View: How AI and Other Megatrends Will Shape Your Investments by Joe Davis, Vanguard’s Chief Economist. It’s a thoughtful book that I recommend. It isn’t overly technical, and it frames the biggest questions investors face today: AI, debt and deficits, demographics, potential deglobalization, and—hardest of all to measure—geopolitical risk. The core question Davis keeps returning to is deceptively simple: can AI generate… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , , ,
17 Nov 2025

International Stocks Gain Some Ground

I’m amazed that the year-to-date return for all of the non-US stocks are up 26.2 percent, and the S&P 500 is ‘only’ up 15.7 percent. It seems like a long time since global stocks have outperformed the S&P 500, so I decided to do some digging. I started with a slightly different index than what I use in the market summary. The summary is all non-US stocks, but for further… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , , ,
3 Nov 2025

What Does It Mean to Eat Our Own Cooking?

We often say that we eat our own cooking, and I think everyone understands what we mean: we personally invest in the same strategies and products that we recommend to our clients. As fiduciaries, we’re already required to put our clients’ interests ahead of our own. Technically, I suppose it’s possible to meet that obligation while investing differently ourselves, but it wouldn’t make much sense. What we’re really saying is… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , ,
27 Oct 2025

Get Up and Dance

Last week, I wrote about Alan Greenspan’s now-famous phrase, “irrational exuberance,” and made the case that timing the market is, at best, a fool’s errand. Greenspan uttered those words so early in the tech bubble that investors who sold after his warning and sat in cash ended up with roughly the same post-crash results as those who stayed invested through the rise and fall. This week, I found myself thinking… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , ,
20 Oct 2025

Irrational Exuberance Revisited

Many people are asking whether we’re in the middle of an AI bubble, and the answer, in my opinion, is probably yes. The much harder question is what to do about it. A recent analysis by Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama, calculated that 92 percent of economic growth in the first half of 2025 was related to data-center… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , , ,
29 Sep 2025

The Fund Performed Fine. Investors, Not So Much

For several years, Morningstar has released its annual Mind the Gap study, which highlights the difference between what a fund returns and the returns investors actually realize. The study underscores a familiar struggle: investors chase performance—jumping into funds after the best gains have passed, or bailing out during a slump only to miss the rebound. The penalty for this behavior is steeper than many realize. Over the 10 years ending… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , , , ,
22 Sep 2025

We Need New Words for an Age-Old Debate

Perhaps one of the longest-running debates in the investment industry is the so-called “active vs. passive” debate. Most people understand it this way: Will active managers who pick stocks (or bonds) fare better than index funds? The industry of stock-pickers says yes; the index fund companies say no way. The name “passive” is just terrible. It sounds like nobody is doing anything, when in fact index investing is a reflection… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , , , ,
15 Sep 2025

The Labor Market is Cooling

The jobs market is cooling down. The unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent. In the pandemic, the unemployment rate peaked at 14.8 percent, but fell to 3.4 percent in April 2023. While the modest tick up from 3.4 to 4.3 percent isn’t great, some of the recent payroll data hasn’t met expectations either. The most recent monthly reading showed that just 22k jobs were created, less than expectations. Worse… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , ,
28 Jul 2025

Heat Wave Inflation: A Decade Running Hot

Last week, I described Vanguard’s take on growth and inflation, and it got me thinking about inflation. In general, I was comforted by their views, which I characterized as ‘Steady as She Goes,’ but the inflation number started to bother me a little bit. Their forecast is for core Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE), which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure for inflation, and Vanguard projected 3.0 percent for 2025 and… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , , ,
21 Jul 2025

Steady as She Goes: Vanguard’s Take on Growth and Inflation

Last week, we had the pleasure of hosting a very sharp economist from Vanguard who shared the firm’s latest views on the economy. I found the conversation illuminating because it helped cut through much of the noise we often hear in the financial media. I’m not suggesting their forecasts are more or less accurate than anyone else’s. That’s an impossible standard, since no one knows what the future holds, especially… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , , ,