Click here to download a PRINT VERSION of this article. In the ten years since the financial crisis, housing markets have recovered, stock markets have eclipsed their prior highs, and the U.S. economy is on the cusp of its longest expansionary period to date. Despite these remarkable gains, the emotional impact of the financial crisis … Continue reading Housing, Homebuilders, and Corrections…
Click here to download a PRINT VERSION of this article. After a volatile end to 2018, interest rates continued their move lower in the first quarter driven by a dramatic shift in U.S. Federal Reserve policy and overarching concerns around the health of the global economy. The benchmark ten-year U.S. Treasury, which hit a recent … Continue reading An About Face from the U.S. Federal Reserve
Back in 1946, a nuclear physicist working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Stanislaw Ulam, was convalescing from an illness. Unable to binge Netflix (as I do when recovering under bed rest) he instead amused himself by playing solitaire. Ever the mathematician, Ulam began wondering about the statistical probability of a successful solitaire game. As … Continue reading How I Stopped Worrying About Uncertainty and Learned To Trust the Numbers
The old saying “stock prices follow earnings” was not in effect during 2018. The S&P 500 delivered outstanding earnings growth of 22% during the year. However, this impressive earnings growth coincided with the worst performance for the S&P 500 in over 10 years, along with one of the worst single quarters since 1940. Practically overnight, … Continue reading What Does the Recent US Stock Market Action Mean for 2019?
A market saying is to “sell the news”, implying that by the time news is released, it is already priced into an asset’s price. Exhibit A: On January 24, 2018, a prominent media outlet hyped a headline touting, “The stock market is off to its best start in 31 years and that bodes well for … Continue reading Sell the News – The US Dollar and Multi-Asset Class Investing
A few years ago, a new client asked me to review a “universal” life insurance policy that she bought in the early 1990’s. The insurance company had recently increased her annual premiums by a whopping 32% and the policy would soon lapse unless she opened up her wallet. Suffice it to say, she was equally … Continue reading Universal Life Insurance in a Low Rate Environment
Bond markets in the fourth quarter experienced a significant amount of volatility as investors attempted to gauge the extent of further Federal Reserve tightening and the likelihood of an economic slowdown as we move into 2019. For the full year, the broad US bond market return was flat while yields vacillated dramatically in the final … Continue reading Credit Markets Showing Great Uncertainty
To download a printable version of this article, click here: 201810 OPCM – Marijuana Around this time last year, we wrote an article highlighting the increasing signs of speculation and euphoria we were seeing in the burgeoning cryptocurrency market. Our skepticism had less to do with the merit or potential use of cryptocurrencies, and more … Continue reading Seeing Green?
To download a printable version of this article: 201810 OPCM – The Risk Of Investing In One Asset Class For many decades, the best risk-adjusted returns were found using a multi-asset class investing approach. Historically this discipline, used by most of the top performing large foundations and endowments, enabled investors to achieve equity-like returns with … Continue reading The Risk Of Investing In One Asset Class
To download a printable version of this article: 201810 OPCM – Foreign Currency Conundrum On August 13th, 2018 a headline in the International Business Times read, “Turkey facing currency meltdown and credit crunch fears”. The “meltdown” the article was referencing was a three day, 30% decline in the value of Turkey’s currency, the Lira. Normally, … Continue reading Foreign Currency Conundrum
