The Home Stretch: Finishing strong
Financial Planning in the Time of Covid I can’t believe it is December already. In some ways, the year has flown past; in other ways, it seems like an eternity. Decades from now, we will be regaling the bored grandkids with tales of 2020, how we fought the raging...
Third Quarter 2020 Market Overview
The third quarter felt like a roller coaster ride for investors, as optimism around lessening state restrictions and hope for another round of government stimulus sent markets higher in July and August, continuing the historic recovery seen in the second quarter. And...
2020: A Year Like No Other
Only three months to go! We are finally getting to the back stretch of this ‘annus horribilis,’ the Latin term made famous in the modern era by Queen Elizabeth II in 1992 after the British Royal Family suffered an awful year of tragedies and scandals.[i] The daily...
Déjà vu one more time…
This is getting to be a habit. Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day[1], I keep waking up to what seems like the same situation, only different. There I was, happily preparing to tell you that the S&P 500 (and most of the other equity indices) just had the best...
If History Is Any Indicator. Hear what history tells us about presidential elections and the stock market.
Investors often wonder whether the market will rise or fall based on who is elected president. The data show that capturing the long-term returns of the capital markets isn’t as simple as drawing a direct connection from who is in the White House, or in Congress for...
Apple, Gold, the $ and Inflation
Apple’s stock price is up about 50% year-to-date, quite a remarkable achievement for the world’s largest company. In fact, it has more than doubled in one year! Last Thursday, after the market close, several of the big five (see below) announced big earnings...
China Update: July 2020
2020 is certainly going to be a year to remember. As Roseanne Roseannadanna famously said: “It’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another!” I needed a good laugh this morning. Things in the world are looking pretty serious right now, even as capital...
Second Quarter 2020 Market Overview
What a world of difference three months can make. By the end of March, the profound uncertainty of the economic impact of Coronavirus on the US and the rest of the world was largely priced into markets. Investors turned to investments like money market funds and US...
Greater Capitalism
The second quarter was the best quarter for the S&P 500 since 1998, up more than 20%[1] since the end of March. Small caps were up more than that! Even bonds kicked in a few percentage points of return. Of course, after the terrible first quarter, this...
A Look at May 2020
We just completed our second month of the second quarter of 2020, after the virus issue created a rapid bear market across the globe in Q1. Since that event we have been going almost day to day, hoping to see improvement and progress, against the virus itself and in...
