Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies. - Ralph Waldo Emerson Hmmm. OK. So there's beauty in truth. But how to tell the truth from the lies? You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. - Obi-Wan Kenobi So what's your [...]
Today the Social Security Administration (“SSA”) announced that the cost of living adjustment (“COLA”) for 2020 will be 1.6%. The 2019 and 2018 COLAs were 2.8% and 2.0% respectively marking the 2020 change as a slowing of the rate of increase. Conversely it’s an improvement over years such as 2010, 2011 and 2016 when the [...]
YTD the S&P 500 is up 17.8%. Cool. But is the average stock up 17.8%? Consider the trend in the number of S&P 500 companies reaching new 52-week highs: Notice something? Fewer stocks are participating. Currently about 35 stocks are making new highs. That’s 7% of the companies that comprise the index. The cause? Cap-weighted [...]
In a surprise to no one (except the grandstanding politicians who brought legal action and did this and this) the four states (CT, MD, NJ and NY) challenging the $10,000 cap on the federal state and local tax (SALT) deduction created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lost their argument. On September 30th a [...]
We hope you enjoy the q2 letter from Ron Baron. Another gem from another of our fav reads. Interesting to note Baron Capital’s preference for businesses that focus on the LT instead of daily, weekly, quarterly or annual targets and how that LT focus produces excellent results. Wonder how many individual investors speculators can say [...]
Join host Mike Norton of the Harvard Business School and economist Allison Schrager as they explore the many forces that influence our relationships with money. Episode #1 - Is it Logical to be Irrational About Money?: Why do our brains seem hard-wired to skew our decisions and lead us astray? Host Mike Norton explores how [...]
Corporate Bonds rated BBB (one notch above 'junk') now comprise half of all investment-grade bonds. Reasons run the gamut from operations (e.g. investing in new plant, equipment or human capital) to financial engineering (e.g. borrowing money at low rates to finance dividends and stock buybacks) and so forth. Why is seemingly less [...]
OK, uninformed is a bit reckless. We don’t mean uninformed in the literal sense. We’re speaking relatively. What we really mean is that advice from people outside of the fields of business, investing and economics is rather helpful when making decisions that have business, economic and societal impacts. In this spirit we queried folks working [...]
To paraphrase a smart quote about Trump the public takes him seriously but not literally whereas the media takes him literally but not seriously. The former explains his election – the latter the existence of his antagonists. Exceptions? Sure. There are people who hang on his every word and take to social media to voice [...]
Please note all below figures are unadjusted for inflation. Since 1950 the average maximum intra-year low for the S&P 500 has been 13.5%. This means that if you had bought the S&P 500 on January 1st of any given year the S&P 500 would on average be down by 13.5% at some point during the [...]