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Second Quarter Market Commentary

Neither the stock market, nor the bond market, were ambiguous this quarter. The MSCI ACWI net Index, a diversified world stock index retreated -15.66% while the Bloomberg Global Aggregate index, a diversified world bond index, was down –8.26%…
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What's In Your Piggy Bank

Don’t you just love how the investment industry uses fancy lingo for everyday experiences. The word of the year is clearly “inflation”, which is just a fancy word for price increases. You used to need to define it, but today’s grocery…
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Thoughts in Charts: Time Matters

I’m not sure you could build a better chart to illustrate how important time is to risk than this one! First, let’s get oriented to what the bars represent. This chart tracks period long returns that tick forward year-by-year. For…
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Thoughts in Charts: Performance Headlines

This First Trust chart came across my desk. While the 2022 year is only through March 31, I think the preceding years paint an interesting picture. Historical performance charts like these are very hard to summarize in a headline. I tried…
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Thin(k) About Your 401(k) Plan - Should I Stay or Should I Go?...This Market Is Hard To Handle!

With the recent market volatility, clients have asked me whether they should “stay in the market,” “sell,” “buy more” or “change my allocation.”  In fairness, these questions come up all the time, but especially when the…
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First Quarter Commentary

Our firm’s mission, Bringing Together Money and Meaning, keeps us acutely aware of the interplay between financial markets and real, human experiences. We cannot deliver market commentary this quarter without writing about the war in the…
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Being Generous With Your Retirement

Americans are generous.  In fact, $471 billion was donated to charities in 2020 according to Giving USA - a 5.1% increase over the prior year.  The fact that we were in the middle of a pandemic with the related loss of jobs, and that over…
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Thin(k) About Your 401(k) Plan: How Will My Beneficiary(s) Receive My 401(k) Account When I Am Gone

In a 401(k) plan, you are allowed to leave the money in your account to a named beneficiary(s) upon your death.  This is a nice feature because the money goes directly to the beneficiary(s) without having to go through your estate.  But…
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Market Senioritis

Our first investment principle is “Discipline is Everything”. The words remind me of my high school English teacher, who dropped a syllabus on our desk the first day of class and explained how skipping more than one of her classes…
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Thoughts in Charts: Difficult Bond Start – Will it Persist?